Race, ideology, and legal action: the case of capital sentencing jurors.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20233868

This dissertation examines the interconnections between race, ideology, and legal action in one specific instance: Capital jurors in death penalty cases. It systematically addresses this by providing a more general understanding of the effect of jurors' race on their (1) broad ideological orientations of crime and the criminal justice system; (2) lingering doubts about the defendant's guilt and their perceived future dangerousness in black defendant-white victim cases as compared to the full sample; and (3) punishment decision making. Using data from post-trial interviews with 292 white (n = 182) and black (n = 110) capital jurors who served on 83 capital juries, I show that (1) there is relative racial consensus on broad punitive orientations at the same time that blacks, and to a far lesser extent jurors with low socioeconomic status, are more mistrustful of the criminal justice process; (2) in the total sample, race of juror is not a significant predictor of perceived future dangerousness; (3) there are independent significant effects between black jurors and having lingering doubts about the defendant's guilt, especially in black-defendant white victim cases; and (4) in black defendant-white victim cases, white jurors are significantly more concerned about future dangerousness which makes them more likely to take an early death stand and to cast a first ballot vote for the death sentence. Finally, I consider the implications of these findings for capital sentencing in practice.