RESEARCHERS FIND THAT RACIAL STEREOTYPES STRONGLY INFLUENCE SENTENCING

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RESEARCHERS FIND THAT RACIAL STEREOTYPES STRONGLY INFLUENCE SENTENCING
18 February 2007 - Cornell University

Looks literally can kill in death-penalty cases where jurors decide the fate of a black defendant, particularly if the victim is white, according to a study co-authored by Cornell University Law Professor Sheri Lynn Johnson.

"Controlling for a wide array of factors, we found that in cases involving a white victim, the more stereotypically black a defendant is perceived to be, the more likely that person is to be sentenced to death," Johnson and her three colleagues write in the study "Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes."

The "Looking Deathworthy" study was written by Jennifer L. Eberhardt of Stanford University, Paul G. Davies of the University of California at Los Angeles, Valerie J. Purdie-Vaughns of Yale University and Johnson of Cornell.

"If a potential juror were to admit that he or she would be more likely to impose a death penalty if the defendant looked stereotypically black, that juror would be disqualified from serving as a matter of law," Johnson says. "The conundrum is, what if the juror in fact is influenced by race or racial characteristics, but is not aware of that influence? The law should find such an influence impermissible, as well, but there is currently no recognized claim concerning unconscious influence."

Researchers asked a group of Stanford University undergraduates to view a series of photographs and rank them as looking more, or less, stereotypically black. The students did not know that the men in these photographs all were convicted murderers. The men in the photographs who the students perceived as being most stereotypically black were more than twice as likely to actually have been sentenced to death. Specifically, 57.5 percent those who were ranked as more stereotypically black had received a death sentence, as opposed to 24.4 percent who were perceived as looking less stereotypically black.

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About: Cornell University
Once called "the first American university" by educational historian Frederick Rudolph, Cornell University represents a distinctive mix of eminent scholarship and democratic ideals. Adding practical subjects to the classics and admitting qualified students regardless of nationality, race, social circumstance, gender, or religion was quite a departure when Cornell was founded in 1865.

Today's Cornell reflects this heritage of egalitarian excellence. It is home to the nation's first colleges devoted to hotel administration, industrial and labor relations, and veterinary medicine. Both a private university and the land-grant institution of New York State, Cornell University is the most educationally diverse member of the Ivy League.

On the Ithaca campus alone nearly 20,000 students representing every state and 120 countries choose from among 4,000 courses in 11 undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools. Many undergraduates participate in a wide range of interdisciplinary programs, play meaningful roles in original research, and study in Cornell programs in Washington, New York City, and the world over.

In his first inaugural address, at the Weill Cornell Medical College campus in Qatar in October 2004, Jeffrey Lehman, the first Cornell alumnus to become its president, articulated a vision projecting Cornell as "the transnational university of the future."

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