Newly published research suggests who lives and who dies is determined, to a significant degree, by gut-level instinct. It finds the decision to impose a death sentence is based in part on a completely irrational construct: Whether the convict has what is perceived as a trustworthy face. This finding "suggests an alarming bias in the criminal justice system," conclude the study's co-authors, University of Toronto psychologists John Paul Wilson and Nicholas Rule. "Put simply, one's face may determine one's fate, at least in the judicial domain." It has long been known that, consciously or not, people tend to size up strangers based on their facial characteristics. But would this sort of mental shortcut come into play when making the weighty decision of sentencing a convicted murderer to either death or life in prison? To find out, Wilson and Rule collected photographs of 371 men on Florida's death row (nearly the entire population), ...
Striving for a World without Capital Punishment