Good or Essential? The Effects of Victim Characteristics and Family Significance on Sentencing Judgments and Perceptions of Harm

ABSTRACT

Victim impact statements containing information about the character of the victim, as well as their significance to the family were varied across conditions to examine their effects on perceptions of harm and sentencing decisions for 166 death qualified participants. The results indicate that information concerning the victim's significance to their family significantly influenced sentencing judgments, whereas victim character information failed to do so. Perceptions of harm significantly mediated the relation between family significance and sentencing decisions. Implications for the Supreme Court ruling in Payne v. Tennessee (1991) and the relevance of including information about the victim as a means of communicating harm in capital trial sentencing are discussed.

Key words:

• character
• crime victims
• harm
• jurors
• sentencing
• victim impact statements

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1 Because the family significance manipulation also produced significant differences in the perceptions of the victim's character, a 2×2 completely between-subjects analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was also conducted using character ratings as the covariate. After statistically controlling for character ratings, a main effect again emerged for family significance, F(1, 133) = 133.93, p < .001, η_p² = .50. However, once again, no main effect emerged for victim character, F(1, 134) = 0.60, p = .44, η_p² = .005, nor did a family significance by victim character interaction emerge, F(1, 134) = 0.07, p = .79, η_p² = .001.

2 In both attitudes towards the death penalty and attitudes towards the guilt of the defendant, the present sample showed characteristics typically seen in jurors who sit on capital trials. The voir dire process in capital trials will address death qualification status, but will further identify biases arising from strongly held opinions regarding the death penalty. Previous research has demonstrated a ‘pattern of correlation between a juror's attitude toward the death penalty and his attitude toward conviction in a particular trial’ (United States ex rel. Clark v. Fike, 1976) and, as such, potential jurors are often subjected to extensive questioning in order to maximize the likelihood of detecting bias and ensuring that capital juries are constitutionally formed (Arbuthnot, 1986; Nietzel, Dillehay, & Himelein, 1987). Additionally, studies have found that, on average, quantitative interpretations of reasonable doubt typically lie between .90 and .99 (Hastie, Penrod & Pennington, 1983; Kassin & Wrightsman, 1979). Consequently, there was a need to deselect those participants who failed to meet this threshold.