Let’s (not) talk about race: comparing mock jurors’ verdicts and deliberation content in a case of lethal police use of force with a White or Indigenous victim

ABSTRACT

Several lethal police use of force (UoF) encounters have recently occurred across North America, sparking public debate about officer accountability. This project investigated what jurors discuss during deliberations in simulated trials involving UoF and evaluated whether the race of the victim affects individual verdicts and deliberation content. Canadian jury-eligible participants (N = 78) watched and listened to a fictional trial involving a police officer charged with manslaughter with a White or Indigenous victim. After rendering individual pre-deliberation verdicts, mock jurors took part in a 60-minute deliberation session, then rendered individual post-deliberation verdicts. Although victim race did not have a statistically significant effect on pre-deliberation verdicts, the odds of jurors rendering a guilty post-deliberation verdict was nearly 10 times higher when the victim was White as opposed to Indigenous. Deliberation analyses indicated that jurors were significantly more likely to provide ‘anti-defendant’ and ‘pro-prosecution’ utterances when the victim was White as compared to Indigenous. However, jurors very rarely directly discussed race in deliberations. Additionally, jurors with negative perceptions of police were significantly more likely to utter ‘anti-defendant’ statements. Overall, this study suggests that, contrary to the assumption of the Canadian legal system, victim race influences legal decision-making in trials involving officer UoF.

KEYWORDS:

• Juror decision-making
• jury decision-making
• police use of force
• victim race
• deliberation

Open Scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Open Materials. The materials are openly accessible at https://osf.io/ykxgv/.

Data availability statement

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

Disclosure statement

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

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 One participant confirmed they were jury-eligible while signing-up for the in-person session, but then indicated they were not a Canadian citizen on the demographic questionnaire. In addition, two participants did not finish the demographic questionnaire, and therefore did not explicitly indicate whether they were Canadian citizens with no indictable offenses. Results are unaffected by removing or retaining these participants.

2 https://osf.io/b58p3/

3 The transcript is available on OSF.