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Confronting The Invisible Witness: The Use Of Narrative To Neutralize Capital Jurors' Implicit Racial Biases, Pamela A. Wilkins

West Virginia Law Review

How can capital defense lawyers craft narratives that neutralize jurors' unconscious racial and ethnic biases? A well-developed body of research in cognitive psychology indicates that despite even the best of intentions and the absence of conscious prejudice, most Americans harbor unconscious biases against African Americans. These biases influence what we actually perceive, how we interpret what we perceive, and how we act. For reasons related to the content and structure of capital sentencing trials, these unconscious biases are particularly likely to influence capital jurors. In effect, unconscious racial bias acts as an invisible witness against the African American defendant, buttressing …