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Furman V. Gerogia Case Analysis

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Secondary Annotated Bibliography Brewer, Thomas W. "Race and Jurors' Receptivity to Mitigation in Capital Cases: The Effect of Jurors', Defendants', and Victims' Race in Combination." Law and Human Behavior 28, no. 5 (2004): 529-45. The article begins by explaining the importance of Furman v. Gerogia (1972). Furman v. Gerogia (1972) was a Supreme Court case that decided that death sentences were being handed down in an arbitrary and standard less manner. In response to this ruling many States began to draft guided discretion statutes, that sought to provide a frame work for capital sentencing that would assist jurors in making more reliable decisions. The case also introduced the importance of mitigating evidence when considering death penalty …show more content…

This racial discrimination has led to a discriminatory manner that punishes blacks who victimized whites more severely compared to whites who victimize blacks. Even though race has been abolished as a legally relevant factor in capital sentencings, there are still variations in capital sentencing patterns along racial lines. The author tries to answer the question of how a system that tries to design itself as a racially neutral system can still have racial variations in capital sentencing. The author argues that there is a link between race and empathy in mitigation. The author conducted a study that focused on juror race and receptivity to mitigation and defendant race. The study concluded that in-group/out-group dynamics effected mitigation. Jurors were more receptive in situations where the defendant was the same race compared to where the defendant was a different race. I will use this source as evidence that there are racial biases that effect receptivity towards mitigating factors. This source will help me focus on juror empathy towards …show more content…

The study picked jury-eligible subjects, who were randomly assigned to view one of four versions of a simulated capital penalty trial in which the race of the defendant and race of the victim varied. The results of the study indicated that the deliberations created a punitive rather than lenient shift in the jurors’ death sentencing behavior. The white mock jurors had the tendency to sentence black defendants to death more often that white defendants. The author’s main thesis is that there are two important major flaws in the capital jury decision-making process. The first is its unreliability. There are apparent arbitrariness and unpredictability in the outcomes of capital cases. The second flaw is unfairness. Extralegal factors such as race still play a significant role in determining which defendants are sentenced to die and which get to live. The research conducted focuses on those serious flaws and how capital jurors’ lack of instructional comprehension contributes to not only confused decision-making but also to racially discriminatory death sentencing. The authors also conducted a study that focused on the “White male dominance” effect on capital jury deliberations. The results of the mock juries suggested that the race effects for the overall group were driven by the white men

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