The Role of the Jury in the Killing State

Sarat and Austin’s article investigated the role of juries in capital punishment cases. Jurors are given the decision because they are supposed to represent the interests of the community, as well as the intentions and beliefs of the common individual. The state delegates this power to jurors and therefore gives them the ability to give order of death. Jurors justify choosing the death penalty for many reasons. In the Connors case, the prosecution showed pictures of the murder victim and had the jurors pass around the murder weapon. This made the violence blatantly real for the jurors; the evidence presented made Connors seem like a monster, able as he was to perpetrate such violence. They were not amenable to the defending counsel’s argument that his circumstances – especially the alcohol and drugs he’d imbibed, not to mention his precarious home life – altered his choices and perceptions, leading him to killing the victim. The jurors could not identify with the defendant and were unable to sympathize with his plight; in contrast, they feared for Connors’ release and the additional lives he might end if he was ever released from prison. This, coupled with the idea that a life sentence could mean getting out in ten years, whereas a death sentence may mean life in prison, is why the jurors passed the judgment that Connors be executed. The article rounds out the misperceptions of the legal system, as well as the moral obligations felt by the jurors, and the subsequent sentencing.

I was particularly interested in the focus on violence in the article. In it, Sarat and Austin write, “While the prosecution makes great efforts to persuade jurors that such violence is unnecessary, irrational, indiscriminate, gruesome, and useless, the violence of the death penalty is described… as rational, purposive, and controlled through values, norms, and procedures external to violence itself” (155). Also, the jury believed that they were one device of many that would see Connors to his execution, if that day came, because he would be able to appeal the decision, and if he was denied, the jurors were not the only people to condemn him; they were merely a cog in the machine. This belief, coupled with the description of violence (Connors’ murdering a man versus the state’s execution of Connors), reminded me of Nazi Germany. It has been said that the soldiers were able to exterminate so many people was because each had a sole function – one group loaded people onto trains. Another group herded them to the gas chambers. Another turned the knob that released the gases. No individual person had the responsibility of the decision; rather, many people contributed and felt that they were only doing their jobs to a righteous end. Looking back in history, we know now how horrific those events were. I wonder if someday we’ll back on these executions and feel the same way.