The potential jurors were assured their answers would be seen only by attorneys in the case. The questionnaire prodded them about a variety of topics, some quite personal, including their religion, hobbies, mental health, medications, substance addictions, criminal record, ACLU membership and “your personal view of psychiatrists and psychologists.”
There also were questions that could foreshadow possible defense strategies, including whether “you, a family member or a friend (has) ever been the victim of physical or sexual abuse” or “emotional or mental abuse as a child.”
“If yes,” it said, “please describe.”
And there were questions with questionable relevance, such as “What type of car(s) do you drive?”
There were 11 death penalty related questions, starting with “Do you believe in the death penalty? If yes, why?”
That was followed by more nuanced queries, including one seeking the “statement which best summarizes your general views” about the death penalty. One possible answer was “I am generally opposed to capital punishment except in those very few cases of an unusually brutal, bizarre or extreme nature.”
Question 24 asked if life without parole could be “more appropriate” in some capital murder cases. Question 25 asked if death could me [sic] “more appropriate” in some capital murder cases. Question 26 asked if answers to questions 24 and 25 would change in “the intentional killing of a police officer.”
Question 19 asked “Have your views on the death penalty changed over the years?”Some years ago in a past life, my old firm Paper Trail Research Services performed a service for attorneys in civil cases evaluating potential juror pools overnight using public records and web-based databases, supplementing (and occasionally, contradicting) data listed in the juror questionnaires. Today, in the era of Facebook, Twitter and other social media, I imagine that sort of supplementary data would be even more robust and readily available. Given that some of the questions can indeed be quite personal, it's little wonder not everyone is completely honest when answering them.
Capital murder juries must be "death qualified," meaning anyone who fundamentally disagrees with the death penalty cannot serve. You get a jury of your peers as long as those peers all agree it's okay for the government to kill you.
My personal view of the death penalty amounts to agnosticism. Do I "believe in the death penalty"? I'd have to say "yes," in the sense that, yes, it exists. (I also believe in evolution, and that the earth revolves around the sun.) And I'd have to answer question 19 - whether my views on the topic have changed over time - as "yes." Over the years, I've tried on varying death-penalty positions, pro and con, like so many ill-fitting suits. Neither abolitionism nor overt support seem to fit my own personal sensibilities. If pressed, my answer to nearly every such query on the subject would likely be "it depends," which I doubt would satisfy either side in such a case. Grits actually believes life without parole is a "worse" punishment than death. Everyone dies, but not everyone is locked up in a cage for decades on end with no hope of redemption.
Anyway, I consider one's theoretical views on the topic to have little value as it relates to any particular episode: The question in any given case is not theoretical, it's "should the state kill this guy?" There's also a subtext to that question: "Do you trust the government with life and death decisions?" A lot of people may believe in the death penalty but may also believe the government couldn't find its ass with both hands and a flashlight.
There may be people in the world you think need killing. But with trust in government near all-time lows, that doesn't mean one necessarily trusts the prosecutors or the judge, the competence of defense counsel, or for that matter the legislators who set the parameters for who will die and how those decisions get made, much less the appellate courts reviewing the cases for error. Nor can one necessarily trust that the governor will step in to fix any problems via clemency if and when those folks inevitably screw up.
All that to say: I'm glad I wasn't called for that jury.
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11 comments:
It's similar to my view. I wholeheartedly support the death penalty for capital crimes as a concept. Unfortunately, our legal system is so dysfunctional I could never trust them to carry out that sentence justly.
Can't resist the opportunity to say "ditto". My main reason is that after 15 years in the criminal justice system, my faith in the good sense of juries and absolute honesty of prosecutors has been badly shakenm, Nay, destroyed. Recent exonerations has a lot to do with it.
Prison Doc
I nave heard that death qualified jurors are much more likely to convict. Is that true? If so, it's no wonder that prosecutors like capital punishment so much.
Both sides get equal input while picking the jury, both sides use the best techniques they are aware of for screening jurors. Both sides believed that they had a suitable case for trial or else they would have plea bargained. Yet, in every case, one of the sides did not pick jurors that saw it their way. Exactly half of the time, one of the counsels gets it wrong. Thus I think that jury selection would be fairer for both sides and just as likely to produce a positive outcome for one of the sides, if all jurors were chosen by lot.
By now it is apparent to any halfway-lucid citizen that the LEOs, the courts, the prosecutors and the prisons have all made their own reputations. I don't trust any of them to do anything except protect their own turf and power at this point.
I'm not a cynic at all. I just read the news. THEY made their own reputations.
Rather than simply bemoaning the deficiencies of the current system, I would be interested in hearing about another approach that would definitely work better. I am pretty skeptical of any non-adversarial approach to jury selection, and I think most defense attorneys would be similarly skeptical. I would bet that in a side-by-side comparison, the current system despite its problems would turn out to be a better option than any other alternative.
I don't have a lot of problems with how we pick juries, and not enough to say "no death penalty". My concerns actually run to prosecutoral misconduct, the blind eye we turn to police misconduct, and judges who simply can't or won't apply the law. Those problems are serious and rampant enough to push me towards not ever issuing the death penalty.
As a juror, I simply cannot ever be sure that I haven't been lied to by the prosecutor, the cops, AND the judge.
One reason I could never support capital punishment is because of the abysmal quality of defense counsel in TX cases, at every stage. While there have been efforts to improve the standards for counsel, they are often ducked by judges who go on appointing the usual suspects, and the way that the "qualification" lists are written simply grandfathered in some of the worst. Without competent defense counsel, the prosecutors will go on getting away with their shenanigans, and the all-important sentencing phase evidence for the defense will still not be presented ...
One reason I could never support capital punishment is because of the abysmal quality of defense counsel in TX cases, at every stage. While there have been efforts to improve the standards for counsel, they are often ducked by judges who go on appointing the usual suspects, and the way that the "qualification" lists are written simply grandfathered in some of the worst. Without competent defense counsel, the prosecutors will go on getting away with their shenanigans, and the all-important sentencing phase evidence for the defense will still not be presented ...
As a former LEO who at one time was a strong proponent of the death penalty, I have to say that I have come back to almost dead center by saying it depends on the crime.
With the reputation that has evolved in Texas with corrupt cops, prosecutors, judges, ME's, all conspiring to get and keep their conviction rates up, it is hard to be a strong proponent any more. With the legal system being as dysfunctional as it is, not only in Texas but elsewhere, I have come to the conclusion that I would much rather see a person guilty of a capital crime get life vs someone who did not commit a crime worthy of the death penalty be convicted anyway and put to death.
Grits, theoretically I might agree that life w/o parole is worse than death penalty. Practically, I cannot, for at least two reasons: (1)there is always the chance that somewhere down the road the conviction may be overturned; and (2)I have never heard of a plea bargain in which the accused plead guilty if life w/o parole was taken off the table and capital punishment was left on. Note I say I haven't heard of it. Doesn't mean it hasn't or won't at some future time happen.
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