Jury decision making in the capital penalty phase: Legal assumptions, empirical findings, and a research agenda.

Abstract

There are large bodies of research on the deterrent value of the death penalty and public attitudes towards capital punishment. However, little is known about how jurors decide whether a particular defendant should live or die. This article briefly summarizes the case law that attempts to guide the discretion of jurors in the penalty phase of capital murder trials, reviews empirical research on penalty decision making, suggests a methodological strategy for investigating the penalty phase, and identifies several promising directions for future research. Four broad categories of research are identified: the effects of guiding juror discretion, comparisons of juries that vote for life with those that vote for death, the relationship between guilt and penalty phases, and models of decision making in the penalty phase. Several testable hypotheses are proposed.