Effects of Trial Venue and Pretrial Bias on the Evaluation of Juvenile Defendants

• Date: 01 June 2009
• DOI: 10.1177/0734016808325037
• Author: Narina Nunez,Connie M. Tang,Martin Bourgeois
• Published date: 01 June 2009
• Subject Matter: Articles

210

Effects of Trial Venue and Pretrial

Bias on the Evaluation of

Juvenile Defendants

Connie M. Tang

Richard Stockton College of New Jersey

Narina Nunez

University of Wyoming

Martin Bourgeois

Florida Gulf Coast University

This research examines how the public evaluates juvenile defendants tried in different venues

and whether participants with different pretrial dispositions evaluate these juvenile defendants

differently. In Study 1, 144 undergraduate students judge juveniles tried as adults more harshly

than adult defendants or juveniles who were tried in the juvenile court. Prosecution-biased par-

ticipants judge all defendants more harshly than defense-biased participants. In Study 2, 123

community residents are recruited. Findings of Study 1 are largely replicated. In addition,

defense-biased participants are more likely than prosecution-biased participants to endorse the

wayward youth stereotype instead of the superpredator stereotype of juvenile defendants.

Implications for juvenile justice and further research on the evaluation of juvenile defendants

and pretrial bias are discussed.

Keywords: trial venue; pretrial bias; juvenile defendants; decision making

In response to a surge of violent juvenile offenses in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, the

public and the legislatures in the United States endorsed a “get tough” attitude toward

juvenile offenders (Snyder & Sickmund, 1995). This tendency toward punishing youthful

offenders instead of rehabilitating them continues to be prevalent despite a sustained

decrease in violent crimes committed by juveniles beginning in the mid-1990s: In 2004,

violent crimes committed by juveniles, such as murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated

assault, decreased for the 10th consecutive year (Snyder, 2006). For example, juvenile mur-

der arrests in 2004 were 71% less than those in 1993. These encouraging statistics have not

given rise to any noticeable change in public perception of violent juvenile offenders, or in

legislative handling of juvenile cases, and the majority of the citizens continue to embrace

get tough philosophies for juveniles who commit violent crimes (Urbina, 2005).

A common way to get tough on juvenile crimes is to transfer juveniles from the juvenile

court to the adult court to afford them more severe punishment (Puzzanchera, 2003). How

juveniles can be waived to adult courts vary from state to state, with the general trend

toward easier transfer mechanisms. For example, in the case of automatic legislative

Criminal Justice Review

Volume 34 Number 2

June 2009 210-225

© 2009 Georgia State University

Research Foundation, Inc.

10.1177/0734016808325037

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Authors’Note: Please address correspondence to Connie M. Tang, Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences,

Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, Pomona, NJ 08240; e-mail: connie.tang@stockton.edu.

Tang et al. / Trial Venue and Pretrial Bias 211

waiver, a juvenile above a certain age and charged with a certain type of crime can be

automatically waived to adult court, without the benefit of a court hearing, as in the tradi-

tional method of judicial waiver. Even though trying juveniles as adults has been an option

since the earliest days of the juvenile justice system (Hamparian et al., 1982), little is

known about how people view juveniles tried as adults. As more juveniles are tried in adult

court, public perception of this group of defendants becomes an important area of inquiry.

This article reports two studies that examined how people evaluate juveniles tried as adults,

compared to juveniles tried in the juvenile court, and adult defendants. The two studies also

investigated the influence of pretrial attitudes on the evaluation of the defendants.

When a juvenile is taken out of the rehabilitation-driven juvenile justice system and

placed in the punishment-oriented adult court, the public might regard the juvenile as hav-

ing committed an “adult crime,” as being very dangerous, or as having a criminal history,

a perception that may or may not be true. Often, juveniles waived to adult courts are

charged with more serious crimes than those retained in the juvenile court (Cauffman,

Piquero, Kimonis, Steinberg, Chassin, & Fagan, 2007; Myers, 2003). However, not all

juveniles tried as adults are charged with serious crimes and have a criminal history. This

may be particularly true for juveniles who live in states with automatic legislative waiver,

an increasingly popular mechanism to transfer juveniles to adult courts. As of 1999, 29

states have legislative waiver in place, contrasting that with 46 states with judicial waiver

(the traditional and most prevalent strategy) and 15 states with prosecutorial waiver, which

allows the prosecutor to file charges directly against a juvenile defendant in criminal court

(Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, 2003). Under automatic legislative

waiver, a juvenile without a prior criminal record can be waived to adult court. Also, under

the “once an adult, always an adult” mandate in some states, juveniles who were once pros-

ecuted as adults are tried in adult court for subsequent offenses, regardless of the serious-

ness of the offense. Therefore, juveniles without a criminal record and juveniles who are

charged with light crimes can be tried as adults in these states.

It is doubtful, however, that the public is aware of the individual variations of juveniles

waived to adult courts. We suspect so partly because of a tendency for the mass media to

negatively portray juveniles tried as adults (Bishop, Frazier, Lanza-Kaduce, & Winner,

1996; Ghetti & Redlich, 2001). For example, although only 11% of the juveniles tried as

adults are charged with murder (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1998), the mass media often

exclusively reports on murder cases, such as Lionel Tate and the Washington-area sniper

John Lee Malvo. Consequently, the public may associate juveniles tried as adults with

serous crimes such as murder with maliciousness and callousness. This potential bias

against juveniles tried as adults might lead the public to render the juvenile more culpable

than case evidence warrants, which would impede on the juvenile’s Sixth Amendment right

to an “impartial jury” (as argued by Levine, Williams, Sixt, & Valenti, 2001). Before we

become too concerned, however, it is important to carefully investigate public perceptions

of juveniles tried as adults. To answer the question of how juveniles tried as adults are eval-

uated relative to juveniles retained in the juvenile court or adult defendants, researchers

have used field studies and laboratory studies.

One of the field studies was conducted by Myers (2003), who examined the cases of 557

violent youths from Pennsylvania, among whom 138 were waived to adult court. Compared

to the youths retained in the juvenile court, those who were waived to adult court were