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The Emotional Economy Of Capital Sentencing, Stephen P. Garvey
The Emotional Economy Of Capital Sentencing, Stephen P. Garvey
Stephen P. Garvey
You often hear that one reason capital jurors condemn capital defendants is that jurors don't empathize with defendants. And one reason they don't empathize is that the process of capital sentencing is rigged against empathy. Using data from the South Carolina segment of the Capital Jury Project, I try to examine the role emotion plays in capital sentencing. Without entering here all the important and necessary caveats, I find that the self-reported emotional responses jurors have toward capital defendants run the gamut from sympathy and pity at one extreme, to disgust, anger, and fear at the other. What causes these …
Jury Responsibility In Capital Sentencing: An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells
Jury Responsibility In Capital Sentencing: An Empirical Study, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells
Stephen P. Garvey
The law allows executioners to deny responsibility for what they have done by making it possible for them to believe they have not done it. The law treats members of capital sentencing juries quite differently. It seeks to ensure that they feel responsible for sentencing a defendant to death. This differential treatment rests on a presumed link between a capital sentencer's willingness to accept responsibility for the sentence she imposes and the accuracy and reliability of that sentence. Using interviews of 153 jurors who sat in South Carolina capital cases, this article examines empirically whether capital sentencing jurors assume responsibility …
Forecasting Life And Death: Juror Race, Religion, And Attitude Toward The Death Penalty, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells
Forecasting Life And Death: Juror Race, Religion, And Attitude Toward The Death Penalty, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey, Martin T. Wells
Stephen P. Garvey
Determining whether race, sex, or other juror characteristics influence how capital case jurors vote is difficult. Jurors tend to vote for death in more egregious cases and for life in less egregious cases no matter what their own characteristics. And a juror's personal characteristics may get lost in the process of deliberation because the final verdict reflects the jury's will, not the individual juror's. Controlling for the facts likely to influence a juror's verdict helps to isolate the influence of a juror's personal characteristics. Examining each juror's first sentencing vote reveals her own judgment before the majority works its will. …
Death-Innocence And The Law Of Habeas Corpus, Stephen P. Garvey
Death-Innocence And The Law Of Habeas Corpus, Stephen P. Garvey
Stephen P. Garvey
The legal space between a sentence of death and the execution chamber is occupied by an intricate network of procedural rules. On average, it currently takes between six and seven years to traverse this space, but this interval is expected to shrink. Federal habeas corpus, an important part of this space, is studded more and more with procedural obstacles that bar the federal courts from entertaining the merits of a defendant's claims. By design, these barriers foreclose federal review in order to protect the state's interests in the finality of its criminal convictions, as well as to display healthy respect …
The Merciful Capital Juror, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey
The Merciful Capital Juror, Theodore Eisenberg, Stephen P. Garvey
Stephen P. Garvey
We examine the role of mercy in capital sentencing along three dimensions. We first explain why mercy is a philosophically problematic virtue, and second, why it presently holds an ambiguous status within constitutional doctrine. Finally, we draw on interviews with jurors who served on capital cases in order better to understand how the behavior of merciful jurors compares to the behavior of their less merciful counterparts. Among other things, we find that merciful jurors tend to be better educated and to attend religious services regularly. We also find that merciful jurors are, as one might reasonably expect, more apt to …