On October 2 every year, the world marks Wrongful Conviction Day, drawing attention to the plight of prisoners incarcerated for crimes they didn’t commit. It’s a day nobody should have to remember.
With an estimated 3,000 Americans exonerated to date, exonerees are imprisoned for an average of 13.3 years. Marcellus Williams was not so lucky. Last week, he was executed in Missouri despite a lack of evidence against him.
Around the same time, millions of viewers were captivated by a Netflix documentary about the Menendez brothers. Despite admitting the savage murder of their parents in 1989, their case reignited much discussion—and even sympathy.
True crime is a multi-billion-dollar industry for magazines, publishers, podcasters, and networks. Yet, as a behavioral scientist and Chair of the Innocent Project London, I ask why so many strangers sympathize with and romanticize self-confessed killers over the innocent.
Why We Sympathize With Criminals
This phenomenon is a complex mix of psychological and social factors.
1. Media Narrative. When documentaries or televised dramas portray criminals as victims or explain their actions through a traumatic lens, it shapes how we perceive them. Perpetrators become more humanized, even when their crimes are barbaric. In 1996, the Menendez brothers’ self-defense for shotgun-blasting their parents was years of alleged sexual abuse. A portrayal of two scarred young men tapped into a sympathetic narrative.
Yet, after a hung jury, the prosecution changed the narrative. They depicted cold-blooded murderers with premeditated financial motives. The judge limited testimony about the alleged abuse, reducing its emotional impact. Tried with a single jury, they were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Local context also shapes cognition. Californians were outraged after the O.J. Simpon not guilty verdict. This memory effect was not lost.
Humans are drawn to narratives of redemption. When guilty criminals express remorse, regret, or rehabilitation, we may be more inclined to forgive or support their turnaround story. When actions clash with beliefs or values, we experience dissonance. To reduce this, we downplay, excuse, or shift blame onto others.
2. Empathy Over Outrage. Over time, sensational headlines fade into more complex, nuanced narratives. Public outrage tends to diminish as we acclimatize and desensitize to atrocities such as war or famine. Emotional distance allows people to reconsider events, sometimes more sympathetically. It’s how justice system appeals work.
Media accounts of wrongful convictions evoke empathy for victims of a flawed system. Think Steven Avery in Making a Murderer or the Central Park Five. Moreover, Robert Zajonc’s mere exposure effect indicates that repeated exposure to people or information increases our affinity towards them. This happens even with high-profile criminals. In comparison, innocent people are assumed guilty and tend to receive less media coverage—until the hour of of the lethal injection.
When ordinary victims are affected at scale, wrongdoing is more difficult to digest, and less sympathy is apparent. Consider the opioid crisis, Theranos’ falsified blood tests, the British Post Office scandal, or Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.
The halo effect further distorts judgment about criminal behavior. A positive trait such as charm or intelligence often leads you to think that an individual must possess other positive traits, even if there’s no evidence.
In Ted Bundy’s case, the public struggled to reconcile his intellect and good looks with the brutality of his statewide murders. A 1974 study found that attractive defendants were given more lenient sentences by mock jurors
3. The Antihero Appeal. Another reason is the appeal of the antihero, the characters who break from social norms and are associated with dominance, confidence, and risk-taking. The Menendez brothers present as deeply flawed yet relatable, even if they’re morally ambiguous. Evolutionary psychology explains how we’re intrigued by “bad boys.”
The cultural fascination with celebrities is not new. What’s new is how this celebrity effect extends to criminals such as Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, whose notoriety translated into intrigue and even admiration. Each received marriage proposals from their fans as if they were rock stars.
The archetype of the misunderstood fuels empathy. Legal defenders frame clients as victims of circumstances, systemic failure, or false accusations. Some are depicted as scapegoats “pushed” by their environment, casting them in a favorable light. Victims get forgotten. For their families, this sentiment is hard to take.
4. Moral Disengagement. Albert Bandura’s concept of moral disengagement occurs when people temporarily suspend their moral standards, allowing them to rationalize or excuse a crime if the perpetrator seems likable, sympathetic, or relatable. This is amplified by extenuating circumstances such as childhood trauma, neglect, mental illness, or abuse.
It’s easy to imagine the temper trigger, even in sports heroes such as O.J. Simpson or Oscar Pistorius. Most conclude, “I would never do that.” However, future affective error suggests we cannot predict our future emotions or actions.
People evaluate morality in shades of grey rather than black and white. If someone has been victimized, we struggle to reconcile their behavior with traditional ideas of “evil.” Few would condemn a mother stealing to feed a starving child. When people feel someone was mistreated by the police, sentencing judge, or media—support becomes a form of protest, like the case of George Floyd.
Guilty or Innocent: Achieving Balance
The more compelling the narrative, the more people overlook the outcome. This enduring likability of criminals is attributed to bias, emotional narrative, and media influence. When considered alongside wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice, the fine line between sympathy and the need for justice comes into sharp view.
While empathy can be a valuable prompt to correct injustice for the wrongfully convicted, it can also obscure accountability for wrongdoing. Victims pay the ultimate price, and their voices should never be forgotten—regardless of how interesting, attractive, or scintillating the villain may be.