The Deadly Paradox of Capital Jurors

We examine support for the death penalty among a unique group of respondents: 187 citizens who actually served as jurors in capital trials in South Carolina. We find that capital jurors support the death penalty as much as, if not more than, members of the general public. Yet capital jurors, like poll respondents, harbor doubts about the penalty’s fairness. Moreover, jurors—black jurors and Southern Baptists in particular—are ready to abandon their support for the death penalty when the alternative to death is life imprisonment without the possibility of parole, especially when combined with a requirement of restitution. Support for the death penalty thus exists side-by-side with doubts about its fairness and a distinct preference for some alternative to it. What explains this deadly paradox?