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The Role of Death Qualification in Capital Trials Involving Juvenile Defendants 1
Author(s) -
Butler Brooke
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2007.00174.x
Subject(s) - sentence , juvenile , psychology , capital punishment , capital (architecture) , sentence completion tests , social psychology , clinical psychology , criminology , history , natural language processing , genetics , archaeology , biology , computer science
The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of death qualification in capital trials involving juvenile defendants. Two hundred residents of the 12 th Judicial Circuit in Florida completed a booklet of stimulus materials that contained the following: One question that measured participants' level of support for the death penalty; One Witt death‐qualification question; a summary of the guilt and penalty phases of a capital case involving either an adult or a juvenile defendant; sentence preference; the Revised Legal Attitudes Questionnaire (RLAQ); and standard demographic questions. Results indicated that death‐qualified participants were more likely to sentence both defendants to death. In addition, death‐qualified participants were more likely to recommend the death sentence for the juvenile defendant. Legal implications are discussed.