Victim Impact Statements

Do they adversely affect

sentencing?

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-03-14/morcombe-victim-impact-statements/5321678

News Article: Daniel Morcombe

Case
Thur 13 March: Brett Cowan found guilty of
murder of Daniel Morcombe, more than ten
years after the crime.
Later that day parents of Daniel Morcombe
presented their Victim Impact Statement to
court.
Cowan sentenced on Friday 14th March.
ABC News- 14th March

What is a Victim Impact Statement?

Traditionally, victims of a crime are not involved in the trial except as

witnesses.
Victim Impact Statements (VIS) are relatively new.
In a VIS a victim provides info on how the crime has affected their
life.
Purpose is to help the victim, and rehabilitate the offender.

VIS is not meant to aggravate sentencing. But there is some debate

as to whether VIS.
*** argues

However, a VIS is presented after conviction, before sentencing.

The Law
Criminal Offences are considered as
crimes against the state, not a person.
A VIS is during the sentencing phase of a
trial.
In sentencing, the Judge has the final say.

Psycholegal Issue
Do Victim Impact Statements adversely
affect offender sentencing?

Wevodau et al, 2014

Aim- Examine how VIS affects jury members. Content
of VIS, and Jury susceptibility to emotional
evidence were measured.
DESIGN
402 mock jury members read a summarized
"vignette" of a sexual assault cases, with or without
VIS. Made sentencing decisions on questionnaire.
Jury members also completed a questionnaire to
measure how susceptible they were to affective
information (NFA Scale).
FINDINGS
VIS= Harsher sentencing. Content of VIS did not
matter much.

CONCLUSION
VIS aggravates jury sentencing decisions. The effect
of VIS is stronger if you are susceptible to
affective/emotional information.

Myers et al. 2013

How does the crime itself determine whether VIS has an
effect or not?
Aim: Examine how the heinousness of the crime
interacts with the effect of VIS.
Design: Lab Mock Jury Paradigm, college student
participants.
P's read different versions of the same crime. Variables:
High/Low Brutality, VIS present or not present.
RESULTS
Presence of VIS led to higher sentencing judgements. No
significant interaction between heinousness of crime and
VIS on sentencing.

Analysis of Myers et al.

Limits to validity:
Measure for sentencing
judgements was based
on ratings on a 7 point
scale.
Was quite useful in
subverting one of the
original rationales behind
the use of VIS.

Justice O'Connor in Payne v. Tennessee

( 1991 ).

Davis and Smith, 1994

Perhaps the only random allocation study
supporting null hypothesis
Aim: Examine if VIS led to sentencing
increases in real trial cases.
Procedure: 293 real victims of robbery,
non-sexual assault, burglary. Random
allocation to present VIS or not. Measured
actual outcomes of trial.
Results: Found no evidence to suggest
VIS aggravated sentencing.

Critical Analysis of Research

Lab studies: good control, systematic error?
Field studies: random error, but closer to
real conditions?

VIS formed a much larger proportion of

total evidence than in real trials. Effect
of VIS inflated?
File drawer problem in locating studies with
a null hypothesis result.

Legal/Practical Implications
It seems only way to properly assess VIS is for
studies to approach the length/gravity of real
court cases. e.g. to use real jurors.
Obviously, this would be extremely expensive.
These studies evaluate the effect on jurors, but
Judges hold final sentencing power, and have
many considerations other than harm caused to
the victim.

Conclusion: Do Victim Impact

Statements corrupt?
Lab studies tend to agree that VIS' = harsher penalties.
But do decisions in the lab= actual trial sentencing
decisions?
Furthermore, these VIS studies only looked at juries,
less evidence regarding judges, and actual case
outcomes.
Therefore, it is unclear whether VIS' have an aggravating
effect in real court cases.
Future research may have to bridge the gap between a
jury recommendation and the judges final sentencing.

Discussion
The research on this subject has been quite
divergent. What could be done to improve
methodology? (e.g. would pre-registering studies
help eliminate file drawer effects?)
Given the research, do you think the potential
benefits outweigh the costs for Victim Impact
Statements?
Munsterberg Q: Given current indications of
whether VIS affects sentencing, do you believe it
is worth investing more into sound research,
especially seeing how difficult it could be?

References
Davis, R. C., & Smith, B. E. (1994). "The effects of
victim impact statements on sentencing
decisions: A test in an urban setting." Justice
Quarterly, 11, 453469.
Myers, B, Roopa, A., Kalnena, D., Kehn, A. (2013.)
"Victim impact statements and crime
heinousness: a test of the saturation hypothesis."
Psychology, Crime & Law, 19(2).
Wevodau, A. L., Cramer, R. J., Clark, J. W., Kehn,
A. (2014.) "The Role of Emotion and Cognition in
Juror Perceptions of Victim Impact Statements."
Social Justice Research, Feb 2014.