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There is a paucity of research on juries in general including the jury selection process. Very little of it examines the effect of gender. This study surveyed 138 potential jurors to determine whether jurors believed they were excluded from jury service due to gender. Additionally the study assessed whether gender affected attitudes about women serving on juries and whether perceptions about women and jury service were associated with general views about the fairness of the justice system. Findings suggest that gender had little effect on jury service or views about women serving on juries, but views about women and their role in jury service was associated with perceptions of general fairness in the system, regardless of the respondent’s gender. These findings point to the need for a more complex understanding of gender when examining the jury selection process.

Although researchers have acknowledged the importance of environmental and contextual factors in the judicial decision-making process, there is a lack of attention to sentencing decisions and outcomes in territorial courts of the United States. Drawing on the focal concerns perspective, this study analyzes the sentences of 583 federal defendants sentenced in the District Court of the United States Virgin Islands between 1997 and 2004. The findings reveal that net of legally relevant factors, Hispanics receive harsher sentences than blacks, and legal aliens receive prison sentences that are significantly longer than those received by U. S. citizens. However, the influence of legal alien status is driven by the harsher sentences imposed on defendants who are citizens of the Dominican Republic. The meaning and implications of the influence of citizenship status and race/ethnicity in a context where race/ethnicity are not overriding statuses, as they are on the U. S. mainland, are discussed.

The effects of lynchings on criminal justice outcomes have seldom been examined. Recent findings also are inconsistent about the effects of race on imprisonments. This study uses a pooled time-series design to assess lynching and racial threat effects on state imprisonments from 1972 to 2000. After controlling for Republican strength, conservatism, and other factors, lynch rates explain the growth in admission rates. The findings also show that increases in black residents produce subsequent expansions in imprisonments that likely are attributable to white reactions to this purported menace. But after the percentage of blacks reaches a substantial threshold-and the potential black vote becomes large enough to begin to reduce these harsh punishments-reductions in prison admissions occur. These results also confirm a political version of racial threat theory by indicating that increased Republican political strength produces additional imprisonments.