Three hundred venirepersons from the 12 th Judicial Circuit in Florida completed a booklet of stimulus materials that contained the following: one question that specified participants' level of support for the death penalty; one Witt death-qualification question; a case scenario that included a summary of the guilt and penalty phases of a capital case; verdict and sentencing preferences; a 16-item measure that required participants to rate their receptiveness to the insanity defense on a 6-point Likert scale; and standard demographic questions. Results indicated that deathqualified venirepersons, when compared to excludables, were more likely to endorse certain insanity myths, find the defendant guilty, and sentence the defendant to death. Legal implications are discussed.
Opinions about the criminal trial of O. J. Simpson, as well as general racial attitude, were assessed in different samples of African Americans and Whites in three studies: during jury selection (Study 1), after closing arguments (Study 2), and after the jury verdict was reached (Study 3). We assessed the effects of respondent race, gender, and general racial attitude on case opinion factors and guilt judgments at each point in time. Race was strongly related to case opinions and guilt judgments in all three studies. Racial attitude related significantly to guilt judgments only in Study 1 for Blacks and in Study 3 for Whites. Guilt judgments of Whites were more strongly predicted by the case opinion factors than were those of African Americans. General racial attitudes and opinions about the criminal justice system were more positive for Blacks in Studies 2 and 3, while they did not differ across studies for Whites. A hindsight bias was found for Whites but not for African Americans. Race had a more powerful impact than did gender. Across‐study comparison suggested that very few respondents changed their views appreciably over the year‐long trial.
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