Is the Defendant White or Not? |
Is the Defendant White or Not?
The New York Times
2015-01-23
Nour Kteily, Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations
Kellogg School of Management
Northwestern University
Sarah Cotterill, Doctoral Student
Department of Psychology
Harvard University
AS jury selection continues in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the defendant in the Boston Marathon bombings, so does debate about what would constitute a fair and impartial jury. Questions have been raised about the race, gender, age and religiosity of prospective jurors; about the effect of holding the trial in Boston; and about the legal requirement that the jurors be open to the possibility of sentencing the defendant to death.
But recent research of ours suggests that another, largely overlooked factor may also play an important role in the trial: whether the jurors perceive Mr. Tsarnaev as white.
No sooner did the F.B.I. release photographs of Mr. Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, three days after the bombings, than questions arose about the racial identity of the suspects. (“Are the Tsarnaev Brothers White?” ran a headline in Salon.) Although neither brother matched the visual prototype of a white American, both hailed from the Caucasus, the region that gave rise to the term “Caucasian,” and both had lived in America for many years…
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Tags: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, New York Times, Nour Kteily, Sarah Cotterill, The New York Times