Death qualified

What do you guys think about having jurors be "death qualified" in order to be part of a capital case?

On the one hand, I think some people argue that if you allow people who oppose the death penalty to be on the jury, they may simply vote not guilty in order to avoid the sentencing phase. Since there is such a thing as the death penalty, I guess they want juries that will consider it as an option rather than turn to nullification.

On the other hand, there's a lot of data that suggests that when people get together in groups, they become more extreme in their opinions/decisions (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_polarization). Having someone who disagrees with the group can stimulate better discussion and possibly counteract this common effect.

I also read an interesting article that suggested that having the whole death qualified thing produces a jury not representative of the community's values: https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=4625

I tend to agree with this side, but I might be biased since I am pretty against capital punishment.

That being said, please note this really doesn't need to become a discussion of whether capital punishment is right or wrong - there are plenty of other threads for that.

Being a juror is a civic duty. We need an unbias jury... if we only have death qualified then the jury would be bias.

The bias will always be favoring the actions opposing the death penalty because people against it will provide arguments to have the results against sentencing with death penalty.

However, it will also depend on the chance of having majority accepting or opposing it. This will determine the overall outcome.

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to say in the first sentence. Could you rephrase? I'm sleepy

Sorry!

So as a longer version, we have those who are against the death penalty, who are neutral and who accepts it. We can group the latter 2 to one category because they will not be against the death penalty.

So when the time comes, the bias will be there because of those who oppose death penalty. The same jurors will argue for the case to end with not guilty OR of a lesser degree of punishment even though the defendant is found guilty to a serious degree. Thus the bias will be favoring the dismissal of death penalty because the other group as we've defined earlier do not really care.

But this can easily be overcome from both perspectives. Say 12 jurors. 7 are against death penalty and 5 are not. The majority vote will favor and if it does then lesser degree or not guilty will be issued. If the situation is reversed with 7 who don't care (out latter group) and 5 who cares/against, then majority and result will be othrwise.

I think rephrasing and explaining made it worst.

OK that makes a little bit more sense, cheers.

I could be wrong, and someone please correct me if I am, but I was under the impression that all jurors had to agree on both phases of the trial. Having one person who disagrees could produce a hung jury.