The continuing unfairness of death qualification: Changing death penalty attitudes and capital jury selection.

Haney, Craig; Zurbriggen, Eileen L.; Weill, Joanna M.

doi:10.1037/law0000335

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…The analysis did not take into consideration the composition of the jury or the jury deliberation process. Though both of these issues can impact the jury decision‐making process, and have been studied extensively (see Eisenberg et al., 2001; Haney et al., 2022; Rountree & Rose, 2021), the data in the current study did not allow for the examination of these processes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

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Life or death: A qualitative examination of mitigating and aggravating evidence presented in capital trials

Holleran

2023

Behavioral Sci & The Law

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The US Supreme Court has required that death penalty procedures narrow the class of persons eligible for a death sentence. Through the selection requirement, juries must use mitigating and aggravating evidence jointly to determine if a defendant is one of the worst of the worst, resulting in a sentence of life without parole or death. This study analyzed capital trial transcripts from the punishment phase to assess the type and amount of mitigating and aggravating evidence presented to jurors in cases resulting in life without parole and death. The main assumption of the research was that cases resulting in life without the possibility of parole (LWOP) would reveal patterns in the types of evidence presented and differing patterns in cases where the jury handed down a sentence of death. The study qualitatively examined the trial transcripts from the punishment phase of 18 capital murders (nine resulting in LWOP and nine in death). The extra‐legal factors from each LWOP case were matched to a death case to eliminate sentencing discrepancies based on jurisdiction, race of defendant or victim, aggravator, age etc. The results found no consistent patterns of evidence presented in cases resulting life without parole and some relevant patterns in sentences resulting in death.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 88%

“…extensively (see Eisenberg et al, 2001;Haney et al, 2022;Rountree & Rose, 2021), the data in the current study did not allow for the examination of these processes.…”

Section: Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 82%

Life or death: A qualitative examination of mitigating and aggravating evidence presented in capital trials

Holleran

2023

Behavioral Sci & The Law

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“…While the judicial systems and cultures underlying capital punishment vary across countries and regions, people's understanding of the objective facts of the death penalty could be the common starting point for discussion. Another practical implication of this study's findings can be found in the context of jury selection in criminal trials (Haney et al, 2022). Even though some candidates may be too willing to consider the death penalty, exposure to information on wrongful conviction rate may encourage them to make a more prudent decision.…”

Section: Practical Implicationsmentioning

confidence: 82%

Wrongful Conviction Rates and Death Penalty Support: Acceptability Hypothesis in Japan

Watamura,

Ioku

2023

SAGE Open

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This study tested the hypothesis that presenting people with information about wrongful convictions that are considered an unacceptable cost of administering justice lowers support for the death penalty. We recruited 815 participants using an online crowdsourcing service in Japan, randomly assigned them to eight groups with varying combinations of presence or absence of information emphasizing losses caused by wrongful convictions and asked them to answer questions on the death penalty. Results of the preregistration experiment showed no effect of loss emphasis, but the groups provided with information on wrongful conviction rates were less likely to support the death penalty than those with no information; the higher the wrongful conviction rate, the lower was the support. This study’s findings, which replicated a previous study’s findings with non-U.S. participants, support the acceptability hypothesis and confirm the institutional and cultural universality of the effect of wrongful conviction information on public attitude toward capital punishment.

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“…In short, they are over-punished as perpetrators and under-valued as victims in capital cases (Baumgartner et al, 2015). In addition, because of their greater level of opposition to capital punishment, persons of Color are disproportionately excluded from participation on capital juries through the process of "death qualification" (e.g., Haney et al, 2022), exclusions that can impact the likelihood jurors will convict and return a death sentence (e.g., Bowers et al, 2001;Cowan et al, 1984).…”

Section: The Racial/ethnic Implications Of Extending Roper To the Lat...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Roper and Race: the Nature and Effects of Death Penalty Exclusions for Juveniles and the “Late Adolescent Class”

Haney

Baumgartner

Steele³

2022

J Pediatr Neuropsychol

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In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the US Supreme Court raised the minimum age at which someone could be subjected to capital punishment, ruling that no one under the age of 18 at the time of their crime could be sentenced to death. The present article discusses the legal context and rationale by which the Court established the current age-based limit on death penalty eligibility as well as the scientific basis for a recent American Psychological Association Resolution that recommended extending that limit to include members of the “late adolescent class” (i.e., persons from 18 to 20 years old). In addition, we present new data that address the little-discussed but important racial/ethnic implications of these age-based limits to capital punishment, both for the already established Roper exclusion and the APA-proposed exclusion for the late adolescent class. In fact, a much higher percentage of persons in the late adolescent class who were sentenced to death in the post-Roper era were non-White, suggesting that their age-based exclusion would help to remedy this problematic pattern.

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The continuing unfairness of death qualification: Changing death penalty attitudes and capital jury selection.

Cited by 4 publications

References 41 publications

Life or death: A qualitative examination of mitigating and aggravating evidence presented in capital trials

Life or death: A qualitative examination of mitigating and aggravating evidence presented in capital trials

Wrongful Conviction Rates and Death Penalty Support: Acceptability Hypothesis in Japan

Roper and Race: the Nature and Effects of Death Penalty Exclusions for Juveniles and the “Late Adolescent Class”

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