Graduation Year

2025

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Psychology

Second Department

Legal Studies

Reader 1

Jennifer Groscup

Reader 2

Ted Bartholomew

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Abstract

Increased use of psychological and behavioral genetic evidence makes it imperative for the development of an appropriate legal treatment to simultaneously address rehabilitation for criminals with a genetic disposition while prioritizing public safety. This report investigates the influence of a defendant’s nature and nurture background on juror decision-making in a capital punishment trial. The researcher examines how having knowledge of a capital defendant’s nature and nurture background should be used to guide sentencing decisions. The nature element of this study will be represented through the MAOA-L variant and the nurture through an analysis of a defendant’s history of childhood sexual abuse. The researcher refers to the gene x environment interaction theory and previous studies addressing childhood sexual abuse and how jurors interpret evidence when considering the mitigating effects and relevance of the defendant’s background characteristics. Participants would include 475 students, faculty, staff and any passers-by on the University of Miami campus in Miami, Florida. This study would utilize 3 defendant background characteristics: MAOA-L variant; history of childhood sexual abuse; and a control condition presenting information about the crime itself between-groups factorial design. The results of this study will demonstrate that having information on an perpetrator’s nurture background could offer mitigating evidence that could be used to justify a life with parole sentence; while analysis of the nature background will be considered less mitigating pushing jurors to evoke a sentence of life with parole. The results of this study would offer great contributions to the psychology and criminal justice fields encouraging a better balance between the use of capital punishment versus long-term incarceration versus rehabilitation.

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This thesis is restricted to the Claremont Colleges current faculty, students, and staff.

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