Abstract
Jamie Flexon’s Racial Disparities in Capital Sentencing exposes how the administration of the U.S. death penalty post Gregg v. Georgia (428 U.S. 153) contains the seeds of a racially discriminatory process. To accomplish this, Flexon brings to the dialogue research from other disciplines, particularly psychology, to help the reader understand how psychological processes can produce discrimination and how capital jurors, vetted through the hurdle of being “death qualified,” are particularly vulnerable to the potential for discrimination. To build the case, the author reviews Furman v. Georgia (408 U.S. 238) and subsequent case law that created and defined jurors eligible to sit on death penalty cases. This discussion sets the stage for helping us understand how death-qualified jurors view justice and the defendants increasing the risk that such jurors will be proprosecution and racially biased. To illustrate some of the dynamics of this framework, the author utilizes the 1990 General Social Survey data to test for the dynamics of potential juror decision making.
In Chapters 1 and 2, Flexon develops a psychological theoretical frame by distinguishing between racial discrepancies and racial discrimination where racial discrimination means differences accountable by illegitimate factors such as race of the victim. Then she reviews the Supreme Court’s decision in Furman and subsequent decisions in Gregg and companion cases. The question posed by Flexon is whether these decisions requiring states to develop guidelines for juries in deciding to impose a death sentence eliminated racial disparity/discrimination. She concludes Chapter 1 with a brief review of data reflecting substantial disparity in the racial distribution of the death penalty with Whites making up 44% of death row inmates and Blacks 41% while they make up 74% and 12% of the population, respectively. Flexon picks up the issue of the impact of race of victim in Chapter 2. Here she provides an excellent review of McCleskey v. Kemp (481 U.S. 279) where research presented to the Court indicated White victims were 4.3 times more likely to receive the death sentences than similar cases with Black victims. Flexon uses the McCleskey decision to transition to the issue of who qualifies to serve as jurors on capital cases. To serve on capital juries, jurors must be “death qualified” which means that jurors who cannot or will not impose a death sentence are excluded (Wainwright v. Witt: 469 U.S. 412). Flexon draws three key frames for her analysis from these Supreme Court decisions. First, jurors in capital crimes have considerable discretion. Second, death-qualified jurors are more conviction-prone than nondeath-qualified individuals. Third, at sentencing these individuals concentrate like-minded individuals into a context where they can reinforce each other’s preexisting views about race and crime.
Chapter 3, The Psychology of Stereotypes and Attitude Influence, is the foundation of the book where Flexon develops her theoretical framework based on a thorough review of the psychology literature regarding the development of stereotypes and the connection of stereotypes to attitudes and decision making. This chapter logically, succinctly, and carefully builds a model through which stereotypes and attitudes influence impressions and decision making and she makes a strong case for the influence of the media in building and reinforcing the development of stereotypes and attitudes. A lynchpin to the process is the activation of stereotypes and Flexon does this nicely by showing how different demographic groups have different stereotypes and that race and gender serve as important sources of group identification. The chapter closes with the notion from the psychology literature of group polarization where within a deliberating group the group attitude toward a subject will intensify. The implication is that like-minded individuals (death-qualified juries) empaneled on a jury are likely to strengthen each other’s attitudes and stereotypes.
To apply the theoretical framework, the author analyses 1990 General Social Survey data that test two basic research questions: (1) whether crime control beliefs are related to racially biased beliefs and (2) do the two belief systems predict support for capital punishment that is used as a proxy for death qualification. The research limited the analyses to White respondents because the focus was on discrimination against Black defendants. The analyses found that crime control, criminal justice beliefs, and racially biased beliefs are positively associated for White respondents and that Whites show that both crime control–oriented beliefs and racially biased beliefs are related to death qualification measured by support for capital punishment. Further, the analyses found that many demographic factors and beliefs in crime control predicted racially biased beliefs. While there are issues of timeliness and sample size, the analyses allow for significant exploration of the connection between death qualification and racial bias.
This book makes two significant contributions to the debate as to the fairness of administration of the death penalty. First, the author unveils psychological processes that help us understand how, because of the death qualification process, jurors make discriminatory decisions. Second, she analyses data from the General Social Survey to extend our knowledge of the links between death qualification, crime control, and racially biased beliefs, and that while these data have limitations as applied to actual jury decision making, it corroborates the theoretical foundation of the book and sets the stage for more directed research in the future. For a book to be a significant contribution to the field, it must bring new information to the field and provide a sound framework for future research. Jamie Flexon does a solid job of doing this in her book and therefore I recommend the book to anyone wanting a deeper understanding of the implications of our capital punishment system.