Defendant-Juror Juror Judgments* Similarity and Mock

It was hypothesized that juror-defendant similarity would lead to greater leniency toward a criminal defendant when the evidence against that defendant was weak or inconclusive; but when evidence was strong, it was expected that this relationship would be reversed. In Study l, religious similarity was found to be simply and positively related to evaluation of the defendant and leniency, a relationship unaffected by the strength of evidence. This pattern of results was attributed to (a) insufficiently strong evidence against the defendant and (b) the lack of anticipated jury deliberation, problems addressed in Study 2. In that study, when evidence was strong against the defendant, juror-defendant racial similarity did increase the likelihood of conviction, but only when jurors anticipated being in the racial minority in their jury. Implications of the findings for psychological theory and for voir dire were discussed. By exercising peremptory challenges, attorneys in civil and criminal jury trials may influence the composition of juries. They naturally have been interested in identifying any juror characteristics that may be reliably associated with a favorable or unfavorable verdict. Extant research suggests very few reliable and general relationships between juror demographic characteristics (e.g., Golash, 1992) or personalities (Bray & Noble, 1978; Fitzgerald & Ellsworth, 1984; Fulero & Penrod, 1990) and juror verdicts. However, many practitioners (Gobert & Jordan,

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