Extralegal Factors in Evaluating Muslim Defendants: Impact of Juror’s Identity and Stereotypic Crime on Sentencing, Fairness, and Leniency

<ns3:p>What impact does a mock juror’s identity salience have on the evaluation of a Muslim defendant based on the type of crime that was allegedly committed? In study 1, mock jurors, who were college students, had their religious/moral/spiritual/control identity primed and evaluated the case of a Muslim (or religion unstated) defendant who was allegedly the accomplice to a crime stereotyped to be religiously motivated (terrorism) or not (arson). Mock jurors were harsher when judging terrorism (rather than arson) and a defendant with an unstated religion (rather than being Muslim, contrary to hypotheses). Study 2 sought to generalize these results to a more representative sample to reflect the composition of a real jury by using MTurk workers, while testing if there was a leniency bias toward the Muslim defendants. Study 2 found that when a moral identity was salient, more leniency was given to the Muslim defendant, regardless of the type of crime allegedly committed. This has implications for identifying factors to train jurors and lawyers to foster greater impartiality for defendants.</ns3:p>