Mock juror decisions regarding an undocumented immigrant: Similarity of defendant-juror ethnicity matters

Abstract

Hispanic and White undergraduates (N = 238) read an online scenario depicting a Hispanic defendant on trial; defendant documentation status (undocumented, natural-born citizen) and defendant background (more sympathetic, less sympathetic) were varied. White participants saw the Hispanic defendant as generally more likely to commit a crime than Hispanic participants. White participants also saw the undocumented defendant as most likely to be guilty, while Hispanic participants saw the undocumented defendant as least likely to be guilty. These results suggest that defendant-juror similarity has an impact on juror decisions, even when the defendant is undocumented, a finding important for those selecting jurors.

Keywords:

• Undocumented immigrant
• defendant
• Hispanic
• White

Disclosure statement

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Notes

1 The term “immigrant” refers to someone living in the U.S. who was not a U.S. citizen at birth. Some immigrants live in the U.S. legally (e.g., naturalized citizens, legal permanent residents, those with student or work visas, those admitted under refugee or asylee status–Batalova et al., 2021). Some immigrants live in the U.S. illegally; they either entered without authorization from the U.S. government or they entered with a visa that has since expired (Estimates of the unauthorized immigrant, 2021). These immigrants are considered “undocumented” or “unauthorized.” Immigrants with Latinx or Hispanic origins, the topic of this paper, represent a large portion of the U.S. immigrant population. Recent estimates suggest that out of the approximately 45 million immigrants who live in the U.S., 44% have Latinx or Hispanic origins with approximately 24% of the overall total coming from Mexico (Batalova et al., 2021). Most of those immigrants are here legally. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that approximately 11 million people in the U.S. are undocumented or “unauthorized immigrants,” and almost 50% of those are from Mexico (Baker, 2021).

2 We think it is important to indicate how we chose to write about ethnicity, a major focus of this article. The American Psychological Association (APA) notes that the term “Hispanic” often refers to those who speak Spanish, while the terms “Latinx” and its gendered associates, are more inclusive (https://www.apa.org/about/apa/equity-diversity-inclusion/language-guidelines). When we asked our participants for their ethnicity, some crossed out “Latinx” and wrote in “Hispanic.” The APA recommends that we use the terms our participants use; thus we decided to use “Hispanic.” Although we acknowledge that “Hispanic” may not be an adequate description of all in our sample and/or target population, we chose to use this term in our experimentation and in our writing about that experimentation for the sake of consistency. There are occasions however, in which we use other terms (i.e., “Mexican,” “Latino,” “Latinx”); in these cases we are representing research completed by others and using terms that the other authors chose to use in their own work.

3 All participants were volunteers (the voluntary nature of this research was a part of the informed consent form). Participants at the home institution were given extra class credit in exchange for their participation. Decisions to compensate the other participants were left up to the individual instructors who were recruiting participants at the different institutions (we recognize that this is less than ideal, but we felt that individual instructors at other institutions should have the option of compensating their students as they see fit).

4 These open-ended responses were analyzed in the following ways: 1) number of participants who mentioned ethnicity explicitly, 2) number of participants who mentioned the undocumented status of the defendant explicitly, 3) number of participants who explicitly mentioned the defendant’s background, and 4) number of people who mentioned the lack of evidence as a reason for their verdict. As a reliability check, the number of participants who mentioned ethnicity explicitly when explaining their verdicts were coded by the first and third authors independently. Inter-rater reliability on coding alibi content was calculated at 97% (percent agreement: (#agree/#agree+#disagree)). The one difference was resolved through discussion. The third author analyzed the remainder of the open-ended responses.

5 We included “zero” years as a possible sentence to give an option to those who thought the defendant was “not guilty” (i.e., there would be no missing data). The upper limit was chosen because in our home state 20 years is the upper limit of a possible sentence for armed robbery.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Esmeralda Navarro

Esmeralda Navarro designed and completed this work as an undergraduate in her senior year at Rider University. She is planning on attending law school in the near future.

Wendy P. Heath

Wendy P. Heath is a Professor of Psychology at Rider University and the author of a textbook entitled Psychology Research Methods: Connecting Research to Students’ Lives (published by Cambridge University Press).

Joshua R. Stein

Joshua R. Stein aided in the completion of this work while a senior at Rider University. After graduation he is planning on attending graduate school at George Mason University.