Instead, the mock jurors were most likely to sentence dangerous defendants to death, regardless of the PCL-R label attached to those defendants. In fact, defendants who were considered a high-risk of future violence but were not psychopaths were most likely to be sentenced to death.
This study was fascinating in many ways. First, like many studies, it suffered from a representation sample problem. The participants were first year psychology students, which means that they may already have been more educated than many jurors, particularly in the issue of psychopathy. However, the researchers address this issue by citing a study that indicates no difference in mock juror and real juror results. The study eliminated the jurors who were morally/ethically opposed to the death penalty, which reflects the reality of jury selection in capital cases. However, they also excluded a student for failing to answer some of the factual questions about the case correctly. This omission is actually troubling, because it assumes that jurors could always answer factual questions about a case correctly. That is not the case; in fact, jurors are never given a qualification test like that. Excluding someone who misunderstood the facts of the case, in any way, means that one is taking the research study further outside of the realm of actual jury trials. Sometimes jurors are confused, and mock jury experience should reflect that possibility.
There was another way that these study participants differed from an actual or even many mock juror scenarios that left this reviewer with questions about the Personality Disorders: Theory, Research, and Treatment. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0026184
Cox, J., DeMatteo, D., Foster, E. (2010). The effect of the Psychopathy Checklist- Revised in capital cases: Mock jurors' responses to the label of psychopahty. Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 28, 878-891.
