Jurors in United States death penalty cases are often excluded because of race and gender, are not shown critical evidence and tend to be conviction prone, the Death Penalty Information Centre said on Tuesday in a report.
”While most Americans never serve on a capital jury,” the report said, ”everyone is affected by a system that fails to respect those who do serve and that falls woefully short of justice.”
With the number of executions nearing 1 000 nationwide since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, — 12 US states have not adopted it — the DPIC found US juries are increasingly reluctant to vote for death.
Of 37 people freed from death row since 2000, 23 had been convicted because of ”misconduct in misinforming the juries,” said the DPIC report, ”Blind justice: Juries deciding life and death with only half the truth”.
In the past five years, it added, ”death sentences have dropped by over 50%,” as juries choose to impose life sentences ”given what they have seen and heard about abuses in the system”.
Described as ”the first to focus on the problems of the death penalty from the perspective of jurors”, the report found ”disturbing” trends in how juries are chosen and treated during high-profile, life-and-death trials.
”Jurors’ colour and gender will often play a key role,” said the report, adding that in recent polls ”far more blacks and women oppose the death penalty than white males”, making their exclusion from capital juries more likely.
People with religious beliefs contrary to the taking of lives are equally excluded.
”A death-qualified jury is more likely to favor the prosecution’s point of view,” said the report, adding that studies have shown capital juries ”more prone to convict than other jurors”.
But even with the odds stacked in favour of the prosecution, juries are often ”kept in the dark regarding key information about the case… evidence is chronically withheld, alternative suspects ignored, and questionable forensic evidence is presented as if it held scientific fact”, the report said.
In addition, ”the complex rules of death sentencing procedures ensure a sense of frustration and emotional pain as jurors are asked to make one of the most difficult choices of their lives”, the DPIC said.
The death penalty, said the DPIC, ”fails jurors and, in turn, fails as a system of justice… The costs in terms of mistakes, the conviction and even execution of innocent people, are exceedingly great.”
The problem, concluded the report, ”is in the failed attempt to twist a system designed to identify the clearly guilty into a system for weighing life and death”.
”The stakes in these cases encourages bending the truth and the elimination of jurors who might question the process.”
As of October 1, the DPIC said 985 people had been executed in the United States since 1976 — 58% were white, 34% were black.
Texas is the top executioner with 349 people put to death, followed by Virginia, with 94.
In the 38 US states allowing the death penalty, 3 415 people are awaiting execution — 46% are white, 42% are black and 10% are Hispanic and other ethnic groups.
A country of 296-million people, the US population is 80% white and 13% African American and four percent Asian. Fourteen percent are Hispanics, who may be of any race. – AFP
