Document Type

Poster

Publication Date

Summer 2025

Abstract

The Stand Your Ground (SYG) law proposes to remove the duty to retreat before using deadly force in situations where individuals believe they are in imminent danger. No research to date has explored the possibility that protections offered by SYG laws in self-defense cases disproportionately extend to White defendants more than to Asian defendants.To examines how SYG legal instructions interact with defendant and victim race to influence juror decisions, a total of 360 U.S. citizen participants were randomly assigned to one of eight conditions in a 2 (SYG Instructions: present vs. absent) × 2 (Defendant Race: White vs. Asian) × 2 (Victim Race: White vs. Asian) between-subject design. Participants read a summary of a self-defense mock trial and rendered a verdict and a series of case judgments. There was a significant indirect effect of SYG instructions on diminished guilt judgments via increased perceptions of the defendant's reasonable fear - but only when the defendant was White and not when he was Asian.

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In Copyright - Non-Commercial Use Permitted