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Study: Ugly defendants more likely convicted, get more prison time

Reports CBS News: "According to a Cornell University study, unattractive defendants are 22 percent more likely to be convicted than good-looking ones. And the unattractive also get slapped with harsher sentences - an average of 22 months longer in prison."Rather than surveying undergraduates, which was this study's methodology, one imagines it might be possible to devise a study that tested this finding empirically. Take a subset of cases that went all the way to a jury. Rank defendant mug shots by attractiveness (perhaps using focus groups). Then chart the outcomes, grouping similar types of cases, for the homely and handsome alike, following up with juror interviews to round out the dataset with oral accounts. It would be a lot of legwork (that's why God created grad students and interns), but there's enough data available to do such a study...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on May 19, 2010 (boomark / email).