Citation

Hester RK, Smith RE. J. Crim. Justice 1973; 1(4): 319-326.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1973, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/0047-2352(73)90034-2

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The influence of a mandatory death penalty on the verdicts of simulated jurors was assessed. Seventy male and 81 female subjects read a description of a trial involving either a gang war murder or the heinous murder of a child. A guilty verdict carried with it either a prison term or a mandatory death penalty. Given equivalent evidence against the defendant, subjects rendered guilty verdicts significantly less frequently when the sentence was the death penalty than when it was a prison term. However, the influence of the death penalty in decreasing the likelihood of a guilty verdict was defendent on the nature of the crime. The difference in frequency of guilty verdicts was significant in the gang-war-murder condition but was not significant in the heinous-murder condition. Conviction rates in the imprisonment condition were unaffected by the nature of the crime.