The Deadly Paradox of Capital Jurors
38 Pages Posted: 5 Oct 2000
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The Deadly Paradox of Capital Jurors
Date Written: August 28, 2000
Abstract
We examine support for the death penalty among a unique group of respondents: one hundred and eighty-seven citizens who actually served as jurors on capital trials in South Carolina. Capital jurors support the death penalty as much as, if not more than, members of the general public. Yet capital jurors, like poll respondents, harbor doubts about the penalty's fairness. Moreover, jurors?black jurors and Southern Baptists in particular?are ready to abandon their support for the death penalty when the alternative to death is life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, especially when combined with a requirement of restitution. Support for the death penalty therefore exists side by side with doubts about its fairness and a distinct preference for some alternative to it. What explains this deadly paradox?
We suggest that the paradox arises where democratic politics fails to make life imprisonment without parole one of the alternatives to death, or where public education fails to inform or persuade jurors that capital defendants sentenced to life imprisonment will really remain in prison for the rest of their lives.
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