Reactions to the criminal behavior of mentally retarded and nonretarded offenders.

College students' attitudes toward mentally retarded criminal offenders and their estimates of the types of crimes most often committed by retarded persons were assessed through a survey. Based on the survey results, an experiment was conducted in which students' reactions to one of two different types of crimes committed by either a retarded or nonretarded person were examined. Results indicated that the retarded offender received a lighter sentence regardless of the type of crime, apparently because the students thought that he had been coerced into committing the crime and also into confessing to it. Implications of these results for cases involving retarded defendants were discussed.