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02
Mar 22

Blog #5 The Metaphorical Scales of Justice

As you may know, the metaphorical scales of justice are represented by a blindfolded woman holding equally balanced scales. I think this accurately represents the ideal state of the American justice system, and what citizens of this country have been striving to accomplish for centuries. Although ideal in its nature, it is not always that way in practice.

To me, justice means that proven guilty individuals pay for their crime in a manner that equates to the ramifications (pain and suffering) caused by their actions. Criminals who commit minor crimes should be given the opportunity to serve their time and rehabilitate their way back into society. Crimes for which there are no equivalent sentence such as murder or inflicted irreparable physical or psychological abuse should not have the opportunity for rehabilitation or parole and should spend their remaining life in prison.

The American justice system, incorporating a jury of your peers, should be fair and unbiased. However, we know that is not the case currently, and has not been that way throughout history. Minorities, or those without the financial means to defend themselves in court, often do not get the same treatment under the law. Celebrities and those with substantial means often get much favorable results in the courts. We’ve seen examples of this with the OJ Simpson case, and more recently, the college tuition scandal involving several well-known celebs.

There is also a lot of controversy around police and minorities playing out over social media. This has created significant revolts with minorities fighting for equal justice under the law. Without having intricate knowledge of any cases and only having social media and the news as support, it does seem fairly obvious that not everyone is getting treated equally under our eye for an eye system of justice, and other factors come in to play when determining innocence or guilt. One of these factors include generic prejudice, or “prejudices arising from specific pretrial publicity and generic prejudices that cause prejudgments of the case of any defendant perceived as belonging to a general class of defendants who likely are guilty of the crime(s) charged” (Vidmar, 1997). This may result in innocent people being wrongfully convicted.

Although the criminal justice system has been implementing changes over the past couple of decades, the manner of administering justice has several flaws that need to be addressed.

Reference

Vidmar, N. (1997). Generic prejudice and the presumption of guilt in sex abuse trials. Law Hum Behav, 21(1), 5-25. doi: 10.1023/a:1024861925699. PMID: 9058572.

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14
Oct 18

Guilty or not guilty?

Many people are guilty of being biased and can experience generic prejudice, especially when on jury duty. However, you don’t have to be a juror to experience this. There is generic prejudice even when just watching a trial on television, but that depends on what kind of a trial it is. For example, sexual abuse and homicide trials are the ones that seem to get the most attention. Those are especially difficult for jurors and it can be difficult to not be biased. For example, the moment we heard about a woman named Casey Anthony and her dead daughter, most of us said that she must be guilty of murdering her own child. We did this without listening to the facts of the case first. Personally, that is exactly what I thought (and still do). I don’t have children, but I used to work with kids, so I am protective.

Emotions can also be sparked during a homicide or sexual abuse case. We conclude right away that the person on trial must be guilty when it’s something so severe. This can be due to personal experience, or we know someone who went through that, we know a survivor, etc. In most cases, we are right to be biased and think that they must be guilty (which they are most of the time, I think), but there are cases where this would not be the truth. Sometimes there are people on trial who were accused of something so horrible, but end up being innocent. Generic prejudice can put an innocent person behind bars and it can make choosing the right jury a difficult task.

According to an article by Neil Vidmar, “Jurors do not approach the trial as empty receptacles who passively listen to the evidence and decide cases independently of their past experience, knowledge, and awareness of community norms” (Vidmar, 2003). Sexual abuse and homicide cases aren’t the only ones though. Generic prejudice also includes racism, which can affect someone of a different race/culture who is on trial. For example, many people established a negative view of Muslims after September 11th. Although only a particular group of muslims was responsible, an entire faith and people were punished for it. Completely innocent people who had nothing to do with the horrible tragedy that took place in 2001. “Research indicates that events that cause strong negative emotions, or that threaten people’s cultural world view, affect the way that these schemas operate” (Vidmar, 2003).

Basically, people who are racist or have strong views that they can’t put aside, would not make a great addition to a jury. A jury should be open minded and not have any strong views one way or another. If someone absolutely hates muslims, for example, and is supposed to be a juror on a case where an innocent muslim is being charged for a crime, how could they make sure that they give that person a fair trial? The same can be said if someone is accused of murder, and they are guilty, but a juror can’t find them guilty based on various reasons (same ethnicity, background, culture, etc.). It’s no wonder that selecting the right jury can take some time, but this is something to keep in mind if you are called in for jury duty.

 

 

References

Neil Vidmar. When All of Us Are Victims: Juror Prejudice and Terrorist Trials, 78 Chi.-Kent L.Rev.1143 (2003). Available at: https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/cklawreview/vol78/iss3/10
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12
Oct 16

[Criminal Justice] Yes on 62: Repeal the Death Penalty

yeson62logo

This November, voters in my home state of California will have two ballot measures to consider that will determine whether the state amends or repeals capital punishment. I will be voting “yes” on measure 62, which seeks to eliminate the death penalty. While the emotional desire to enact this ultimate punishment for murder can be strong, statistics demonstrate that it is an antiquated sentence that should be no longer be implemented. Here a just a few of the many reasons that capital punishment should be abolished not only in California, but across the United States.

It is racially-biased

The death penalty is a demonstrably racially-biased sentence. Study after study has shown that this sentence is disproportionally handed down to blacks convicted of murdering whites. In sum, “in 96% of states where there have been reviews of race and the death penalty, there was a pattern of either race-of-victim or race-of-defendant discrimination, or both (Center, 2016). Check out this link to see a number of startling infographics on this bias and other drawbacks to the death penalty: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FactSheet.pdf .

It increases wrongful convictions

Both cognitive resource theory (Fiedler & Garcia, 1987) and generic prejudice (Vidmar & Schuller, 2001) increase the likelihood of jurors wrongfully convicting defendants in capital murder cases. This happens because the emotionally stressful nature of deliberating about the facts in a murder trial reduces a juror’s capacity to think rationally, because emotionally-charged facts are more salient than empirical facts. This in turn leads to a bias toward conviction based on the charges alone. Compounding this bias is the fact that jurors who are unwilling to impose a death sentence upon a guilty verdict are excused from serving on a capital case, yet “people who are able to give the death sentence as a punishment for a crime are much more likely to convict than the normal public” (PSU, 2016).

It doesn’t work

The possibility of receiving the death penalty seems like it would be an effective deterrent to murder, but this is an area where, again, the statistics reveal its inefficacy. For example, when surveyed, 88% of former and present presidents of the country’s top academic criminological societies rejected the notion that the death penalty acts as a deterrent to murder. (Radelet & Lacock, 2009, in Center, 2016). Why? As Freakonomics author Steven D. Levitt points out, “no rational criminal should be deterred by the death penalty, since the punishment is too distant and too unlikely to merit much attention” (Levitt, 2007). Incidentally, murder rates are lower in states without capital punishment (Center, 2016). No one wants to appear “soft on crime,” but when polled, even law enforcement officials concur that there are better ways to reduce violent crime (Center, 2016). http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/FactSheet.pdf

 It’s expensive

Since California reenacted capital punishment in 1978, the state has spent approximately 5 billion dollars on death penalty cases and appeals, and has only executed 13 prisoners (“California proposition 62, repeal of the death penalty (2016),” 2016). No need to get out your calculator—that’s an astronomical $384,615,384 per execution. Repealing the death penalty in favor of a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole is expected to save California taxpayers approximately 150 million dollars a year (“California proposition 62, repeal of the death penalty (2016),” 2016).

 

In short, abolishing capital punishment will not only lead to more accurate and equitable sentencing, but it will free up considerable financial resources as well. I can only imagine the reduction in violent crime that could occur if instead of acting on our desire to seek revenge for heinous crimes, we instead followed the recommendations of police chiefs, who believe that being able to hire and properly train more officers, along with greater access to social services, would be a much better use of funds. I hope that this fall California will join the other 30 states in which capital punishment is illegal.

Resources:

California proposition 62, repeal of the death penalty (2016). (2016). Retrieved October 12, 2016, from https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_62,_Repeal_of_the_Death_Penalty_(2016)

Center, D. P. I. (2016). Deterrence: States without the death penalty have had consistently lower murder rates. Retrieved October 12, 2016, from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/deterrence-states-without-death-penalty-have-had-consistently-lower-murder-rates

Levitt, S. D. (2007, June 11). Does the death penalty really reduce crime? Retrieved October 12, 2016, from Freakonomics Blog, http://freakonomics.com/2007/06/11/does-the-death-penalty-really-reduce-crime/

PSU WC. (2016). Lesson 8:  The Legal System/Criminal Justice [Online lecture]. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1802487/modules/items/21234175

 

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