a. Prior to 1972, the death penalty legal procedure varied from one state to the other. However, in Furnam v. Georgia, a Supreme Court case which was decided in 1972, the constitutionality of the death penalty was addressed. In this case, the Supreme Court decided that the death penalty was imposed b as a result of an arbitrary and discriminatory process (Lynch and Haney 337). In this case, the defendants claimed that the imposition of the death penalty represented a violation of their rights under the 8th and the 14th Amendment (Dunn). Furman, the main defendant, was charged of manslaughter after killing a man during home robbery. Furman claimed that the weapon unloaded accidentally. Other defendants in the case involved two other African-American men convicted of sexual assault.
Furman’s lawyer argued that the death penalty lacked a “solid definition” (Dunn), whereas the lawyers of the two other men condemned the discriminatory practices that condemn poor and racial minority people to death at a higher rate than Whites. The issues raised in the case centered upon the appropriateness of the death penalty in rape cases. The Supreme Court eventually issued a per curiam which reversed all three sentences. In Furman, the Justices found that the process by means of which the jurors reached a death penalty verdict were unconstitutional. This decision invalidated the death penalty in most states, due to clear application procedures. In Gregg v. Georgia, a case decided by the Supreme Court in 1976, along with 5 other companion cases, the Court approved other statutes which aimed at limiting the bases upon which the jurors could rule in favor of a death sentence (Lynch and Haney 338). This decision reinstated the Death Penalty and established objective criteria for issuing a death penalty verdict.
b. Voir dire is an expression referring to the process of subjecting the juror to a pre-trial examination, aiming to determine their eligibility as jurors, or their potential biases. The capital voir dire further assesses the jurors’ attitude towards the death penalty. The jurors need not to be overly determined towards the capital punishment in all murder cases, and they do not have to be completely against such punishment. In Witherspoon v Illinois (1968), the Supreme Court determined that a juror could be “death qualified” if the juror can certify that his or her personal moral convictions about sentencing a person to death do not prevent him or her from issuing a death penalty, and thus, the juror is ready to making an impartial decision in the case, without excluding the death penalty from the start (Allen, Mabry and McKelton 715).
Research on death qualification indicates that the more a person favors death penalty, the more likely that person is to convict the defendant. (Allen, Mabry and McKelton 724). Furthermore, different studies have been conducted to assess the idea that death qualified jurors are prone to convict the defendants. For example, in Goldbeg’s 1970 study on the issue, the author found that the participants who had no moral scruples against the death penalty voted in overwhelming majority (75% ) to convict. Furthermore, in Zeisel’s study from 1968, the author interviewed jurors whose verdict was compared with their scruples regarding the death penalty. In this study also, juries with fewer scruples regarding the death penalty voted more often in favor of the death penalty (Cowman, Thompson and Ellsworth 57). This shows that excluding the jurors who have scruples against the death penalty creates an unbalance.
c. In their research Lynch and Haney (339) showed that the instructions received by jurors are often difficult to understand. The concepts of aggravating and mitigating factors are confusing, and the jurors may not always understand and recognize the value of the evidence presented, so as to interpret it as an aggravating or mitigating type of evidence. In these conditions, jurors may look at different peripheral cues that may help them decide, and race is one of the most common factors affecting the jurrors’ decision (Lynch and Haney 340). The race of the defendant, and that of the victim both influence the jurors, even though they may not consciously aware of it.
d. As Haney shows, the inclusion of the death qualification in the voir dire process creates a “structural paradox” because the voir dire procedures confront the jurors with issues of guilt in the pretrial stage. This may desensitize the jury to capital punishment. As explained by Haney, in these cases, the issue of guilt is repositioned in the pretrial stage, and research has showed that the order of presentation affects the guilt/innocence expectations of the jury (Allen, Mabry and McKelton 717).
Works Cited
Allen, Mike, Mabry, Edward and McKelton, Drue-Marie. “Impact of Juror Attitudes about the Death Penalty on Juror Evaluations of Guilt and Punishment: A Meta-Analysis”. Law and Human Behavior, 22. 6(1998):715-731.
Cowman, Claudia, Thompson, William and Ellsworth, Phoebe. The Effects of Death Qualification on Jurors' Predisposition to Convict and Quality of Deliberation. Law and Human Behavior, 8. 1/2 (1984):53-78.
Dunn. The American Capital Punishment System. 2016. Web.
Linch, Mona and Haney, Craig. “Discrimination and Instructional Comprehension: Guided Discretion, Racial Bias, and the Death Penalty” Law and Human Behavior, 24.3(2000): 337-358.
