Latinidad in the Legal System: The Effects of an Expert Witness with a Spanish Accent on Individual Juror Decisions

Abstract

In the criminal justice system, an individual juror can impact the outcome of a case. As these individuals arrive at these decisions, their own backgrounds, histories, and values may interfere. In the current study, we look at how ethnic salience, peripheral processing, and a Spanish accent can impact Latino and Mexican juror perceptions of a lawyer. We found mixed results showing that Latinos who highly rated their ethnic centrality to their identity rated the lawyers’ perceived knowledge higher than non-Latinos. However, discrepancies within group contexts shows that Latinos and Mexicans who viewed their ethnicity central to their identity rated the lawyer lower on persuasiveness and knowledge when comparing ingroup scores. This finding shows that ethnic identity does play a role in individual juror decisions and accents are a peripheral cue in complex cases. More importantly, Latino and Mexican individual jurors’ decisions regarding the accent of the lawyer may be affected by the current socio-political climate in the United States making their decisions highly context dependent.

Key words: ethnic centrality, juror decisions, knowledge, Latinos, Mexicans, peripheral processing, persuasiveness