Inmates are more likely to get the death penalty if their faces are deemed untrustworthy, study says
Convicted murderers whose faces were rated more untrustworthy were more likely to be sentenced to death than those with more trustworthy faces, according to a study of inmates convicted of murder.
The first part of the study, led by University of Toronto social psychologist John Paul Wilson, asked 208 online participants to judge the trustworthiness of male inmates on Florida’s death row based on a review of their mugshots, according to NPR’s Shots blog and the Science Blog. The study used more than 700 inmate photos; each participant rated about 100 images, using a scale of 1 to 8, Shots says.
The lower the trustworthiness rating for an inmate’s face, the more likely the inmate would receive a death sentence, according to the stories, which were noted by the Wall Street Journal Law Blog and the Death Penalty Information Center.
The second part of the study involved an assessment of trustworthiness of 37 inmates who whose cases were handled by the Innocence Project. The inmates had all been sentenced to death or life in prison. The study found that the link between untrustworthy faces and the death penalty occurred even when an inmate was later exonerated.
“This finding shows that these effects aren’t just due to more odious criminals advertising their malice through their faces, but rather suggests that these really are biases that might mislead people independent of any potential kernels of truth,” Wilson told Shots.
