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Competent Capital Representation: The Necessity Of Knowing And Heeding What Jurors Tell Us About Mitigation, John H. Blume, Sheri Lynn Johnson, Scott E. Sundby

Cornell Law Faculty Publications

Capital defense counsel have a duty at every stage of the case to take advantage of all appropriate opportunities to argue why death is not a suitable punishment for their particular client. But that duty can hardly be discharged effectively if the arguments are made in ignorance of available information concerning how persuasive they are likely to be to their audience.

Heeding that simple proposition we present lessons from the work of the Capital Jury Project, an ongoing empirical research effort built upon extended interviews with people who have actually sat on capital juries. We find that the standards for …