Despite the Supreme Court's requirement that jurors consider and give effect to evidence of mitigation in capital cases, a mounting body of research indicates that prospective jurors fail to understand sentencing instructions in ways that would appear to hamper their consideration of mitigation. The work proposed here will address this disjuncture between the law and these empirical findings. Specifically, it will examine how receptive actual capital jurors are to evidence and arguments of mitigation when making their life or death punishment decisions. More specifically, this research is designed to determine the nature and extent of mitigation actually presented to jurors in capital cases (from trial transcripts), to assess the extent to which jurors give effect to such mitigation by recognizing the mitigating nature of such factors and considering or relying on them in their decision making (through interviews with capital jurors), and to gain a more refined understanding of how jurors make the capital sentencing decision both individually and as a group. The study will use trial transcripts to establish the nature and extent of the mitigation to which jurors are actually exposed; such transcripts will be used to prepare for and conduct mitigation grounded interviews with a target sample of five jurors from each of 40 capital trials. These interviews will be designed to assess the role of mitigation in jurors' decision making through a questioning and probing strategy informed by the nature of the mitigation presented to the jurors as revealed by the trial transcripts in their cases, as well as by questions about individual and inter personal influences in their decision making. The interviews will be conducted by persons experienced in interviewing jurors and familiar with the law and research on capital sentencing who will read and code the trial transcripts of the cases in preparation for conducting interviews with jurors from these cases. Hence, this research will capitalize on the collaborative work of a team of investigators who share research interest and experience in this area, and it will draw on the work of interviewers with exceptional experience and expertise in this area of research.
