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Hidden Killers and Imagined Saints: Why Courts Fail to Identify Unconstitutional Jurors in Death Penalty Cases
- Author(s):
- Eric Carpenter
- Date:
- 2022
- Group(s):
- Michigan State Law Review
- Subject(s):
- Law
- Item Type:
- Article
- Permanent URL:
- https://doi.org/10.17613/30vz-3532
- Abstract:
- What if half of the people in the jury pool for a capital case are unqualified to sit—and the lawyers are not accurately identifying and removing them? And what if the lawyers are actually identifying the wrong people as unqualified and removing them instead? This appears to be the case. The Constitution prohibits jurors who will always (or never) vote to impose the death penalty. As developed in this Article, the existing social science suggests that 5– 30% of potential jurors may be automatic death penalty (ADP) voters and between 2–34% may be automatic life sentence (ALS) voters. Further, lawyers are not accurately identifying them. Researchers have surveyed jurors who sat in capital cases and found that a stunning 14–57% were ADP voters, while 2–7% were ALS voters. Meanwhile, qualified venirepersons are being tossed out. Researchers have found that 60–65% of those classified as ALS could vote for death in some circumstances, and at trial, this would result in the exclusion of life-leaning venirepersons. The high rate of improperly included ADP voters along with the high rate of improperly excluded lifeleaning voters stacks the jury pool against the defendant. This unfair and unreliable process calls into question whether the death penalty is constitutional as applied.
- Metadata:
- xml
- Published as:
- Journal article
- Status:
- Published
- Last Updated:
- 6 months ago
- License:
- Attribution
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2022.2-05-carpenter.pdf