Lady Injustice: The Moderating Effect of Ambivalent Sexism in a Mock Case of Intimate Partner Homicide

• Author: Joel Anderson,Laura Cutroni
• Published date: 01 March 2021
• Date: 01 March 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0093854820967704
• Subject Matter: Articles

CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR, 2021, Vol. 48, No. 3, March 2021, 373 –390.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854820967704

Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions

© 2020 International Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology

373

LADY INJUSTICE

The Moderating Effect of Ambivalent Sexism in

a Mock Case of Intimate Partner Homicide

LAURA CUTRONI

Australian Catholic University

Swinburne University

JOEL ANDERSON

Australian Catholic University

Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University

Extra-legal biases have an undue effect on legal proceedings, warranting explorations of gender bias in the courtroom to

promote and maintain just verdicts. We used an experimentally manipulated mock court transcript of an intimate partner

homicide, in which the defendant has been victimized by intimate partner violence. We explore whether hostile and benevo-

lent sexism moderate the decisions of mock jurors. Men and women mock jurors (N = 220) responded to the Ambivalent

Sexism Inventory before being randomly allocated to read a transcript of either a female or male defendant, and then respond-

ing to five sentence outcome variables. Hostile and benevolent sexism moderated several sentencing outcome variables,

across a range of male and female juror and defendant gender combinations, suggesting these forms of sexism are consequen-

tial in driving forensic gender biases. This study also contributes to the literature suggesting that male victims of female-

perpetrated intimate partner violence are systemically disadvantaged in courtroom processes.

Keywords: juror decision-making; benevolent sexism; hostile sexism; intimate partner homicide; intimate partner violence

Research has shown the gender of defendants to be pertinent in verdict and sentencing

trends (e.g., Strub & McKimmie, 2016). The extant literature delineates a consistent

trend where female defendants receive more lenient sentences than men for comparable

offenses (Ahola et al., 2009). This leniency manifests in a number of ways: Women are

more likely to have their charges reduced or dropped (Henning & Feder, 2005), avoid a

criminal conviction (Ryon, 2013), receive shorter prison sentences, or even avoid incar-

ceration altogether (Bontrager et al., 2013; Butcher et al., 2017). Furthermore, there is

AUTHORS’ NOTE: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Joel Anderson, School of

Behavioural and Health Sciences, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne Campus (St Patrick), Locked Bag

4115, Melbourne, Victoria 3065, Australia; e-mail: joel.anderson@acu.edu.au.

967704CJBXXX10.1177/0093854820967704Criminal Justice and BehaviorCutroni, Anderson /

research-article2020

374 CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND BEHAVIOR

evidence that this gendered sentence leniency persists for a range of crimes, with female

defendants receiving more lenient sentences when convicted of either violent (Embry &

Lyons, 2012; Fridel, 2019) or nonviolent crimes (e.g., property-, drug-, and theft-related

offenses; McKimmie & Masser, 2010; Ryon, 2013).

The gender of jurors has also been demonstrated as a key variable in sentencing out-

comes for defendants. There has been considerable evidence to suggest that mock female

jurors are more likely to deliver harsher sentences than their male counterparts in cases of

sexual violence such as child molestation (McCauley & Parker, 2001; Pozzulo et al., 2010),

and sexual assault and rape (Grubb & Harrower, 2008; Osborn et al., 2018). It is important

to recognize that this gendered-sentencing pattern has been demonstrated for crimes stereo-

typed as male-perpetrated and female-victimized. This has been attributed to the gendered

nature of such crimes, which elicits empathy within female jurors due to the jurors’ self-

perceived likelihood of becoming victims of such crimes themselves (Maeder et al., 2012).

Given the gender-related trends in sexually violent crimes, gender is particularly influential

in trials involving intimate partner violence (IPV). Although IPV constitutes any behavior by

an intimate partner or ex-partner that causes physical, sexual, and/or psychological harm, IPV

literature is predominantly focused on physical abuse. As women in heterosexual intimate

relationships are more likely to be severely injured by physical IPV than their male counter-

parts (Hamel, 2018; Lawrence et al., 2012), IPV is overwhelmingly conceptualized as a male-

perpetrated crime. It therefore follows that male defendants accused of perpetrating IPV are

perceived to be more guilty and are sentenced more frequently and severely than female

defendants accused of comparable offenses (Henning & Feder, 2005; Stanziani et al., 2018).

Past research has demonstrated the existence of an interaction between defendant and

juror gender, through which female jurors tend to deliver harsher sentences for male (vs.

female) defendants accused of committing IPV (Allen & Bradley, 2018; Maeder et al.,

2012). However, when IPV victims commit intimate partner homicide (IPH) and kill their

abuser, the defendant–juror gender interaction becomes more complex. Although women

are more likely to be killed by an intimate partner than men (Iratzoqui & McCutcheon,

2018), IPV-victimized defendants accused of IPH are most often depicted as female, and

the IPV perpetrator/IPH victim as male. In such cases of IPH, the expected gendered-sen-

tencing pattern has also been found, with female defendants receiving the most lenient

sentences in comparison with male defendants, with these sentences being delivered by

female jurors more frequently than by male jurors (Hodell et al., 2014; Russell et al., 2009).

In spite of this, some research has found no significant differences between male and female

jurors’ sentences for IPH-accused female defendants (Braden-Maguire et al., 2005). In one

study, male jurors were even found to assign more severe sentences for IPH than female

jurors, regardless of defendant gender (Savage et al., 2017); thus, further research is neces-

sary to determine the direction of a defendant–juror gender interaction in IPH cases. The

limited exploration of cases involving male IPV-victimized IPH defendants also warrants

additional exploration.

A THEORETICAL EXPLANATION FOR FORENSIC GENDER BIAS:

AMBIVALENT SEXISM

Although investigating the incidence of gender bias in the court is paramount to main-

taining the course of justice, mitigating the effect of such extra-legal factors also relies on