Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Citizenship And Punishment: Situating Death Penalty Jury Sentencing, Sarah Beth Kaufman

Sociology & Anthropology Faculty Research

Although capital punishment in the United States is subject to much social scientific scrutiny, there has been little ethnographic study of death penalty trials. This is not only an empirical lacuna, but also a theoretically and politically important one: by failing to take capital trials as primary objects of inquiry, the practices of lawyers, witnesses, judges, and others are viewed as products of, rather than implicated in, the institution of criminal justice. Based on an ethnography of fifteen death penalty sentencing trials across the United States during 2007, 2008, and 2009, this article seeks to understand the role of juries …