Jury’s out on racial bias

by Nicole Findlay

Juries are meant to render verdicts based only on the facts which unfold during a trial. While jury members may believe their own impartiality, their decisions are often influenced by extraneous factors.

Evelyn Maeder, a forensic psychologist in the Department of Psychology and the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice, examines perceptions of race, gender and attractiveness and their impact on the
decisions jury members come to.

In research conducted in both the United States and Canada, white defendants come out on top compared to their African American peers in the US and Aboriginal Canadians in Canada.

Although multiculturalism is a point of pride for Canadians, this tolerance doesn’t necessarily extend to the courtroom.

“In my studies in Canada, so far Aboriginal Canadians are viewed less positively than Black Canadians, who are in turn viewed less positively than White Canadians,” said Maeder.

To arrive at her research conclusions, Maeder measured her research participants’ attitudes toward race, gender and attractiveness, and gave them identical trial transcripts and jury instructions. In each
case, one variable – the defendant’s race, was altered.

She then recorded the verdict submitted for each case. Applied to a group of individual jury members, Maeder found that attractiveness and gender influenced decisions to a lesser extent than did race.

“Most of my work has demonstrated that mock jurors are influenced by defendant race, such that they process trial information differently when a defendant is depicted as Black, White or Aboriginal Canadian,” Maeder explains. “This effect persists in sexual assault, robbery, or assault trials and exists even if jury instructions are provided.”

In the second phase of her research, Maeder will examine the emphasis placed on race by lawyers, defendants and witness testimonies during simulated trials.

“Racial issues can be manipulated by including racial language in the description of the crime itself, by including racially charged pre-trial publicity, or by having an attorney “play the race card” in the opening/closing arguments,” said Maeder.

According to American research, bringing race to the forefront has reduced bias against African American defendants. Maeder will explore whether the same is true of trials involving Aboriginal Canadian defendants.