Life or death decision making: Qualitative analysis of death penalty jurors

Abstract

The relationship between capital jury instructions and imposition of the death penalty in the United States is analyzed through 36 semi-structured interviews collected as part of the archives of the national Capital Jury Project (CJP) at the School of Criminal Justice at the State University of New York in Albany. Former capital jurors expressed confusion, frustration, or ambivalence in areas of instruction clarity and procedural integrity. Specifically, jurors reported significant degrees of confusion as to the clarity of the instructions and the verbiage used to define their role and the exact parameters guiding both their sentencing decision and findings of fact. Moreover, a discrepancy was found in the degree to which statutory aggravation influenced decision making as opposed to mitigating testimony, calling into question both the constitutionality of the death penalty and its compliance with legal precedent. The article concludes with a discussion of the relevance these findings have for forensic social workers working in capital cases including implications for policy and practice.

Defendant Remorse and Publicity in Capital Trials

“…Policy makers would hold that any deficits in decision making may be rectified via jury instructions, but experimental data have mostly revealed that instructions are largely ineffective, and this is more so in capital cases (Devine, 2012). Data derived from capital jurors highlight the level of confusion they experience in applying instructions to help guide their sentencing decisions (Barner, 2014). If jurors are confused by the instructions outlining their tasks, what are they relying on to guide sentencing decisions?…”

The effect of victim race on jurors’ perceptions of lethal use of force

“…Conducting qualitative analyses would allow for a richer and more nuanced understanding of what jurors discuss during deliberation and how particular verdicts are reached (see White & Marsh, 2006, for a useful comparison of the qualitative and quantitative approach to content analysis). Indeed, a handful of jury studies have implemented qualitative analyses to examine deliberation data (e.g., Barner, 2014;Charron & Woodhams, 2010. For example, Meyers and colleagues (2010) used qualitative analysis to investigate particular argument structures in the sentencing phase of a capital deliberation.…”