Stephen P. Garvey

Aggravation and Mitigation in Capital Cases: What Do Jurors Think?

* Associate Professor, Cornell Law School. B.A., Colgate University, 1987; M. Phil., Oxford University, 1989; J.D., Yale University, 1992. E-mail: . Primary funding for the collection of data in South Carolina was provided by National Science Foundation Grant SES 90-13252. Supplementary funding was provided by the Cornell Law School and the former South Carolina Death Penalty Resource Center. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. I would like to thank John Blume, Theodore Eisenberg, Sheri Johnson, Martin Wells, Russell Osgood, and Gary Simson for helpful comments.

Forecasting Life and Death: Juror Race, Religion, and Attitude Toward the Death Penalty

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 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. Race, religion, and how strongly the juror believes death is the appropriate punishment for murder influence a capital juror’s first vote, which usually determines the final vote. Because black jurors are rarely a majority of the jury’s members, majority rule usually means white rule.