UIUC Quant Brownbag

When a person is the suspect of a crime, their physical features have the potential to influence legal decision making. Other important factors are the initial judgments of legal actors, such as judges, jurors, or interrogators. If they judge a person to be guilty before reviewing all of the evidence, this can lead to biased decision making as the case continues (O’Brien, 2009). We investigate the judgments that mock investigators issue in an experiment manipulating the skin color of a suspect and whether the suspect has tattoos or not. Previous literature in the field reveals conflicting findings about how race or skin color affect legal judgments. Many studies report that people display favoritism towards suspects with light skin over suspects with dark skin. Other studies report the opposite effect, where participants give disproportionately favorable judgments and trial outcomes to suspects of color (see Mitchell et al., 2005 for a full meta-analysis). These differences in findings provide an opportunity for model competition. We compare 28 mathematical models informed by the literature to determine which effect(s) are supported in this study.