A 2014 study by Professors Cynthia Willis-Esqueda (pic­tured) of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) and Russ K.E. Espinoza of California State University found that white jurors were more like­ly to rec­om­mend a death sen­tence for Latino defen­dants than for white defen­dants in California. Researchers gave case descrip­tions to 500 white and Latino peo­ple who had report­ed for jury duty in south­ern California, then asked them to choose a sen­tence of life with­out parole or death. The descrip­tion was based on a real cap­i­tal case, but each juror was giv­en one of eight sce­nar­ios which altered the race and income lev­el of the defen­dant and the amount of mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence. White jurors rec­om­mend­ed a death sen­tence about half the time for Latino defen­dants who were poor, but only one-third of the time for poor white defen­dants. By com­par­i­son, Latino jurors rec­om­mend­ed a death sen­tence only about one-quar­ter of the time, regard­less of the eth­nic­i­ty or socioe­co­nom­ic class of the defendant.

(L. Reed, ​“UNL study exam­ines racial bias in death-penal­ty deci­sions,” UNL Today, September 1, 2014; R. Espinoza and C. Willis-Esqueda, ​“The Influence of Mitigation Evidence, Ethnicity, and SES on Death Penalty Decisions by European American and Latino Venire Persons,” (pay­wall) Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, August 25, 2014). See Studies and Race.

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