As increasing numbers of juveniles are tried as adults in criminal court, researchers have begun to examine how jurors perceive these juveniles. Results of several studies suggest that jurors may judge a juvenile tried as an adult more harshly than an adult charged with the same crime; however, other research suggests that jurors show no bias against juveniles tried as adults. The present research aims to clarify this issue by examining the roles of generic prejudice and emotion in jurors' judgments of juveniles tried as adults.
Generic prejudice is prejudice that is not specific to the defendant or other parties associated with a trial, but rather prejudice about a category of defendants or crimes. Jurors may judge a juvenile tried as an adult more harshly than they judge an adult charged with the same crime because of generic prejudice toward all juveniles tried as adults. Furthermore, the experience of certain emotions may facilitate this generic prejudice. According to the Appraisal-Tendency Framework, sadness and fear lead to greater systematic cognitive processing, while anger leads to greater heuristic processing, and in turn, greater reliance on stereotypes when making decisions. Study 1 of this project will assess which stereotypes people associate with juveniles tried as adults compared to juveniles tried in juvenile court and adults tried in criminal court. Study 2 of this project will examine to what extent angry, fearful, sad, and neutral mock jurors use these stereotypes to make judgments of guilt when presented with a juvenile tried as an adult, or an adult charged with the same crime.
The present research will have implications for ensuring that juveniles transferred to criminal court receive a fair trial. Adjudication in criminal court can result in more severe punishment than adjudication in juvenile court, thus it is important to ensure that juveniles tried as adults are not judged more harshly than are adults charged with the same crimes.
As increasing numbers of juveniles are tried as adults in criminal court, researchers have begun to examine how jurors perceive these juveniles. Results of several studies suggest that jurors may judge a juvenile tried as an adult more harshly than an adult charged with the same crime (Levine, Williams, Sixt, & Valenti, 2001; Tang & Nunez, 2003; Tang, Nunez, & Bourgeois, 2009); however, other research suggests that jurors show no bias against juveniles tried as adults (Warling & Peterson-Badali, 2003). This research aimed to clarify this issue by examining the roles of generic prejudice and emotion in jurors’ judgments of juveniles tried as adults. Generic prejudice is prejudice that is not specific to the defendant or other parties associated with a trial, but rather prejudice about a category of defendants or crimes (Vidmar, 2003). Jurors may judge a juvenile tried as an adult more harshly than they judge an adult charged with the same crime because of generic prejudice toward all juveniles tried as adults. Furthermore, the experience of certain emotions may facilitate this generic prejudice. According to the Appraisal-Tendency Framework, sadness and fear lead to greater systematic cognitive processing, while anger leads to greater heuristic processing, and in turn, greater reliance on stereotypes when making decisions (Lerner & Keltner, 2000, 2001). Experiment 1 assessed which stereotypes people associate with juveniles tried as adults compared to juveniles tried in juvenile court and adults tried in criminal court. Experiment 2 examined to what extent angry, fearful, sad, and neutral mock jurors used these stereotypes to make judgments of guilt when presented with a juvenile tried as an adult, or an adult charged with the same crime. Results of Experiment 1 showed that men endorsed some stereotypes to a greater extent for the juvenile tried as an adult compared to the other defendants, while women did not. In Experiment 2, mock jurors judged the adult defendant more harshly than they did the juvenile defendant,but only when they experienced anger and sadness, and in some cases fear. The results suggest that mock jurors do not demonstrate prejudice against juveniles tried as adults as some other research has shown. It may be that there is no general bias against juveniles tried as adults, or at least not in situations where jurors receive enough detailed information to make informed decisions. This study used a lengthy trial summary including many details, which may have given participants sufficient information to make verdict decisions, similar to an actual trial. Other research in this area that did find bias against a juvenile tried as an adult provided participants with very little information regarding the defendant and little to no information regarding the charged crime (Levine et al., 2001; Tang et al., 2009). This may have led participants to rely on their stereotypes to make decisions simply because they had no other information to use. Alternatively, people may be more biased against adult defendants compared to juvenile defendants. Perhaps participants viewed the adult defendant as more culpable due to his older age, and thus when they experienced anger and sadness they were more likely to judge him harshly compared to the juvenile. Jurors may not experience bias against a juvenile because he or she is transferred to criminal court; rather they may take the juvenile’s age into consideration when making judgments, and judge him or her more leniently than an adult defendant. This research contributes to the growing body of literature addressing the important issue of whether the criminal justice system treats juveniles fairly. There is still too little evidence to allow for a conclusion regarding whether jurors demonstrate bias against juveniles who are transferred to adult court. However, the results of this research suggest that jurors may not exhibit bias against juveniles in adult court, or that there are more factors involved in jurors’ decision making when it comes to juveniles tried as adults. Because adjudication in criminal court can result in more severe punishment than adjudication in juvenile court, it isimportant to know that juveniles are treated fairly in the criminal justice system. Additional research will allow for a better understanding of this complex issue.
