A qualified jury is a jury in a criminal law case in the United States where the death penalty is a prospective punishment. Such a jury would consist of a juror who:
- Not explicitly opposed to the imposition of capital punishment;
- It is not from the belief that capital punishment should be imposed in all major murder cases - that is, they will consider life imprisonment as possible punishment.
The creation of such jurors requires beatings during the voir dire jury members who express opposition to the death penalty so that they can not or will not set aside personal, moral, or emotional objections to the death penalty support, and are designed to produce a jury which is fair and impartial whose members will consider all options, including the death penalty and life imprisonment.
Expressing the opposition to the death penalty does not automatically disqualify a jury. A party may try to rehabilitate the jury by asking whether, despite personal belief, they may consider the death penalty. A juror who expressed exorbitant support for the death penalty thus beaten could be rehabilitated if they expressed a willingness to consider life imprisonment.
The use of eligible jury deaths is found to be consistent with the Constitution of the United States, especially with the Sixth Amendment, by the United States Supreme Court at Witherspoon v. Illinois , and within Lockhart v. McCree ; no single decision, mandating the use of a qualified jury as a death sentence against jurors who categorically refused to pass the death penalty. It is in the view of the Witherspoon decision that the process of a person eligible to die as a jury is, in the United States, referring to everyday language as Witherspooning a jury .
A poll commissioned by the Death Penalty Information Center on June 9, 2007, showed 57% of Americans believed they would qualify for a jury in capital cases.
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Bias
The bias imposed by the rules goes beyond the application of the death penalty itself. Some studies have found that the eligible jury comprises fewer women and minorities. Eligible jurors are often criticized because they have a similar effect to excluding jurors based on race or sex, deliberately removed, in Batson v. Kentucky in 1986, is considered inconsistent with the same Protection Clause. of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The empirical evidence presented at Lockhart has also shown that a jury who qualifies the death penalty is more likely than any other jury to convict the defendant. That is, a qualified jury is more likely than a qualified non-death juror to vote for confidence when assessing the same set of facts. It is said that since a jury qualified by the death penalty represents these groups there is a tendency to give a guilty verdict on cases of any kind, including the death penalty that is not considered.
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References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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