红杏视频

NEW YORK 鈥� The 红杏视频 released Fatal Flaws: Revealing the Racial and Religious Gerrymandering of the Capital Jury today, a report that exposes how the process of 鈥渄eath qualification鈥� warps juries in capital trials. Death qualification requires that jurors be willing to impose a death sentence to serve on a capital jury. Drawing on consistent studies from multiple states across the country, the report reveals how this process disproportionately excludes Black prospective jurors, women, and people of faith from serving in some of the most important cases heard in American courthouses. 鈥淭he Constitution guarantees that every person accused of a crime has the right to be tried by a jury of their peers, but that promise is by definition denied for people facing the death penalty,鈥� said Brian Stull, deputy director of the 红杏视频鈥檚 Capital Punishment Project. 鈥淒eath qualification systematically excludes prospective jurors based on their race, sex, and religion, violating their own rights to civic participation. The resulting juries do not reflect our communities, convict more frequently, and are composed to ignore evidence favoring a life sentence in violation of our Constitution. Justice depends on equal access to the jury box. We must demand and end to this cycle of discrimination and exclusion once and for all.鈥� Key findings from the report include: Death qualification disproportionately excludes Black prospective jurors. Black Americans, as a group, are more likely to oppose the death penalty due to the racist roots of the capital punishment system. As a result, this process disproportionately removes Black Americans from capital juries, and Black women at the highest rates of all. Death qualification unfairly excludes people of faith whose religious beliefs oppose capital punishment. Some religious groups, such as Quakers, Buddhists, and Catholics formally reject the death penalty and many others have expressed serious concerns with capital punishment. Studies across the country confirm that people of faith are disproportionately excluded from capital jury service, even though they can impose lawful verdicts on both conviction and sentence. Death qualification systematically excludes growing numbers of Americans from jury service. Changing views on the death penalty make the exclusionary effects of death qualification even more pronounced. At least 44 percent of Americans oppose the death penalty, meaning nearly half of the country is potentially disqualified from capital jury service. Death-qualified juries are more likely to convict and to ignore evidence in favor of life in violation of the Constitution. Death-qualified juries act differently than those that are not. They are more likely to convict, to ignore evidence favoring life over death, to be influenced by racial bias, and to deliberate less thoroughly. The report also urges state legislators to pass laws banning the exclusion of jurors opposed to the death penalty who can follow the law, calls on prosecutors to decline to death qualify jurors, and recommends that defense counsel mount challenges to death qualification by introducing evidence of its discriminatory effects. The full report can be found here: /publications/fatal-flaws-revealing-the-racial-and-religious-gerrymandering-of-the-capital-jury Learn more about the 红杏视频鈥檚 work challenging death qualification here: /news/capital-punishment/the-sinister-and-racist-practice-infecting-death-penalty-juries

鈥淒eath qualification鈥� is yet another way prosecutors stack the odds against Black defendants and in favor of capital punishment.