Dictionaries and Death: Do Capital Jurors Understand Mitigation?

No person can make a more important decision than to determine whether another human being should live or die. When a state considers whether to execute its citizens, American law places this critical decision largely in the hands of a jury. At the same time, courts are clearly concerned that juries not devolve into modern-day lynch mobs, motivated mainly by passion and prejudice. Thus while we generally entrust this task to a jury of ordinary citizens, the factors that the jury may take into consideration and the manner in which it reaches its decision are carefully circumscribed.