Victim blaming in the courtroom: The influence of lawyer gender and style on juror decision-making

Abstract

Despite the present Canadian laws meant to protect victims of sexual assault during the trial process, it is common for defence lawyers to employ stereotypes against the victim (a process known as “whacking”; Tanovich, 2015). It is unclear whether the gender of the defence lawyer is a determining factor in the influence of such stereotypes. Only a limited number of studies have examined the effects of lawyer gender, which yielded conflicting findings (Levi et al., 2022; Villemur & Hyde, 1983). Moreover, the previous studies did not explore whether the lawyers’ cross-examination style or the juror’s level of sexism factor into their verdict choice. This thesis extended previous literature by examining the potential impact of defence lawyer gender, cross-examination style, and jurors’ benevolent sexist attitudes on the outcomes of sexual assault trials and lawyer perceptions. A community sample (N = 212) of jury-eligible Canadians were recruited to read a mock sexual assault trial transcript. The defence lawyer’s gender (woman/man) and cross-examination content (whacking/no whacking) were manipulated. Following the trial transcript, participants delivered an individual verdict and completed measures of ambivalent sexism, rape myth acceptance, and perceived lawyer capability. Three-way interactions were not observed between lawyer gender, cross-examination style, and juror sexism on the verdict outcome or lawyer capability. However, benevolent sexism did directly predict perceptions of the defence lawyer, and the whacking manipulation indirectly affected the verdict outcome via mock jurors’ perceptions of the victim’s culpability. Of most interest, implementing the whacking tactic increased the defence lawyer’s chance at obtaining a not-guilty verdict if the lawyer and the juror were men. Keywords: Juror-decision making, lawyer gender, benevolent sexism, rape myth acceptance, sexual assault trials, victim blaming