Fictitious court cases involving child abuse were presented to 140 male undergraduates and 140 male junior high school students to determine if the tendency to deal harshly with alleged criminals is dependent upon certain defendant characteristics. Results indicate that younger adolescent jurors give longer sentences than older adolescent jurors, and male defendants receive longer sentences tha...

In an earlier study, we unexpectedly found that defendants charged with sex crimes were four times less likely to be convicted than were all other defendants. We now report that failure to convict for rape was associated with failure to come to trial and that minor sex crimes were tried, but often continued without a finding, even when the judge found sufficient facts to make a guilty finding. ...

South African courts have recently accepted social psychological phenomena as extenuating factors in murder trials. In one important case, eight railway workers were convicted of murdering four strike breakers during an industrial dispute. The court accepted conformity, obedience, group polarization, deindividuation, bystander apathy, and other well-established psychological phenomena as extenu...

As state legislatures across the United States continue to permit younger juvenile defendants to be tried in adult court, juvenile competence to stand trial has become an issue of increasing legal and forensic significance. This study examined competency to stand trial in a sample of preadjudicated and petitioned juvenile defendants. Results revealed that juveniles deemed unfit to stand trial w...

United States v. Bozza' has seemingly departed from the heretofore existing rule that a proper cautionary instruction in a multi-defendant trial can cure the prejudicial effect of one defendant's out-ofcourt confession on co-defendants. The appellants were convicted of various crimes related to the burglary of several post offices and the subsequent receipt and transportation of stolen stamps. ...

Personal characteristics of criminal defendants including sex,1 age and education,2 and race have been shown to relate to outcome of the defendant's contact with the criminal justice system. Whether mental disorder relates to outcome is uncertain, although there is anecdotal evidence to suggest that in some cases judges may be influenced by a history of mental disorder to acquit the gUilty. 4 W...