A fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal: Does physical appearance of a defendant influence juridical judgement?

From the findings, it can be concluded that the results do support the hypothesis that mock jurors place a harsher sentence on the unattractive defendant in the manslaughter case. Whereas, it was not seen as significant on the unattractive defendant in the theft case, this finding is counterintuitive to the hypothesis however, one can speculate that being attractive may be more beneficial to those that are on trial for a serious crime. The implications here could be down to the serious consequences to the defendant’s life if they found guilty for manslaughter, when in actual fact it may not be entirely their fault. Whereas, with the theft case there was no doubt in the jurors mind that that individual was responsible for the consequences of their crime, due to being seen on Closed Circuit Television. With the legal system being highly complicated and complex, and with the limited knowledge the jurors hold about the system, maybe it is this that could explain that people were more likely to place a lesser sentence on those in the manslaughter case. But this might not be the only reason for this difference, as the unattractive manslaughter-unattractive theft comparison did not yield significant results.

As Baldwin and McConville (1979) pointed out that juries easily fall victim to stereotypes, manipulation and outside influences and fails in almost all of its goals, the results found here, and previous research further develops this theory. From the concerning results found, there is evidence that attractiveness does have an unwanted effect due to the internal biases of jurors. As a part of the study, participants were asked to answer short questions if they believed there was a criminal face and 10 out of the 32 participa...

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