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February 28, 2009
Victim involvement in the capital punishment process
I mentioned in class an article about victim participation in the death penalty process. That article, titled "Their Day in Court: The Role of Murder Victims' Families in Capital Juror Decision Making," can be accessed at this link. I recommend the whole piece, but here are some snippets of particular note as we get into discussion of racial and gender bias in the application of the death penalty:
When we cross-tabulated co-victims' testimony for the prosecution with the victim's race, we discovered a very significant finding: the co-victims of a white murder victim were more likely to offer testimony than the co-victims of a nonwhite victim....
[W]e find that jurors tend to be less concerned about the suffering of nonwhite-victim families than with white-victim families.... It is possible that since families of nonwhite victims testify much less often (perhaps as a result of institutionalized racism or their own feelings about capital punishment), their place in the minds of jurors is diminished. As a matter of policy, we would strongly encourage greater participation of family members of nonwhite victims in capital trials because their [testimony] may make their side of the story increasingly memorable to jurors. Although the findings we report do not show dramatic differences between whites and nonwhites in terms of participation, the evidence that jurors exhibit racially biased attitudes is statistically significant, and it is discouraging to see race bias plague yet another area of capital punishment.
Among the points worthy of reflection here is that this study is only seeking and able to examine the impact of victims in capital cases that go to trial. Yet there is little doubt that victims can and often do have a profound impact on prosecutorial charging and bargaining decisions in capital cases.
I am inclined to speculate that the racial biases discussed in this article with respect to jury decision-making could be even more profound with respect to prosecutorial decision-making in capital cases. And yet this is only rank speculation because prosecutorial decision-making in capital cases is rarely studied or even subject to measurement through effective data.
February 28, 2009 in Who decides | Permalink
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