Autism spectrum disorder in adult defendants: the impact of information type on juror decision-making

ABSTRACT

Previous research has investigated the effects of providing general information about autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in legal contexts; however, the impact of idiosyncratic information about a defendant’s ASD on juror decision-making has not been examined. Therefore, the current study attempted to determine if there were differences in juror decision-making when (1) a defendant was explicitly diagnosed with ASD and (2) the specific type of information provided about the defendant’s ASD was varied in terms of severity and accompanying impairments. Participants (N = 422) read a case vignette and subsequently provided a verdict decision as well as opinions about the defendant’s responsibility for the crime and considerations of the defendant’s mental health in sentencing as proxy measures of juror leniency. Findings suggest that the explicit presence of an ASD diagnosis acts as a mitigating factor and results in the provision of fewer guilty verdicts. Further, jurors take the severity of ASD into account more than the type of impairment accompanying the disorder such that an increase in severity resulted in fewer guilty verdicts. Additionally, jurors appear to consider social impairments on par with intellectual impairments for adult defendants who present with ASD. Implications and future directions are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Developmental disabilities
• juror decision-making
• adult defendants
• autism spectrum disorder

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, H.A.S., upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 Per suggestions provided by a reviewer, we tested participant gender as an independent variable. While a main effect of gender on all three dimensions of juror leniency (verdict decision, perceptions of the defendant’s responsibility for the crime, and considerations of the defendant’s mental health in sentencing) emerged in that females displayed more leniency than males, participant gender did not interact with any other independent variables and thus this line of analysis was not further pursued.