Effects of Sex of Judge and Sex of Victim on Recommended Punishment of a Male Murderer in a Mock Scenario

Abstract

Two samples of undergraduates (36 women, 7 men; 44 women, 45 men) read a mock transcript in which a murderer's victim was a man or a woman, after which they made prison sentence and death penalty judgments. Female judges gave longer sentences for the female victim than for the male victim, whereas male judges gave longer sentences for the male victim than for the female victim. This same-sex bias suggests that extralegal factors can affect judgments about sentencing.