The Role of Race in Punishing Criminal Violence: Jury Sentencing in Capital Cases

Northeastern University, Boston MA

Investigators

Abstract

This study builds upon recently developed findings of stark differences in the decision-making patterns of black and white jurors from the Capital Jury Project (CJP), a national study of some 1136 jurors from 332 capital trials in 14 states. The CJP investigators found that jury racial composition and race of individual jurors have an impact on sentencing decision processes and on outcomes. The data show that juries with black members, especially black males, are less likely than all-white juries to impose a death sentence, and that this tendency is most prominent in black-defendant/white-victim (B/W) cases. The data also indicate that black and white jurors differ in decision-making patterns and in what they regard as important in arriving at their sentencing decisions. Through a case-focused examination of the role of race, gender, and social class in making capital sentencing decisions, this three-year study provides empirically-grounded evidence on: (1) How members of different social groups serving as jurors view crimes of lethal violence, their victims, and their perpetrators, and (2) How these views affect the capital sentencing decision. Using data from black and white jurors who have served as members of the same juries, the research compares and contrasts thinking about the crime, the defendant, and the victim, thus incorporating the realities of making hard decisions in actual cases. This investigation entails sampling of 54 capital trials in which both white and African American jurors were sworn. Eighteen trials will be chosen to represent each of the three principal offender/victim racial combinations: white on white (W/W), black on white (B/W), and black on black (B/B) killings. Interviews will be sought with six jurors in each case, and black jurors will be oversampled to achieve a minimum of at least 30 African American jurors from cases within each offender victim racial combination. For rapport and candor in these sensitive interviews, the project employs same race interviewers--both African-American and white interviewers working together on each case. Attorney interviews and sentencing trial transcripts are used to indicate the character of the evidence and arguments to which jurors were exposed, and to yield other data for comparison and statistical control.