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THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - November 2, 2009
America's Real Death Panels
by: Diana Novak
In These Times
Next spring, Texas will decide whether or not to become
the first state to admit it executed an innocent man.
Cameron Willingham was put to death in February 2004,
12 years after being convicted of killing his three
infant children in a fire at their Corsicana, Texas,
home.
In August, the International Association for Fire Safety
Science (IAFSS) released a report that concluded none of
the evidence from the fire indicated it was set intention-
ally and that the state fire marshal who testified the
fire was arson lacked "any realistic understanding of
fires."
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The IAFSS was asked to investigate the case by the Texas
Forensic Science Commission, which was created in 2005 to
re-examine questionable forensic evidence. The TFSC plans
to continue its examination of the fire, but admits the
report is a "major step" toward exonerating all that is
left of Willingham: his name.
As in any jury trial in the United States, Willingham,
who maintained his innocence to the end, was convicted
by a group of his peers-12 men and women who supposedly
represented the community in which he lived. However, the
prosecution in his case sought the death penalty, and that
automatically changed the pool of people allowed to serve
on his jury.
For capital cases in which the jury will debate whether or
not to sentence a convicted defendant to death, the Supreme
Courth mandates that jurors be "death-qualified"-that is,
they must pledge during the jury selection process that
they morally support capital punishment and that they would
have no problem signing a sentence that will result in the
death of another human being.
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Social science research indicates that this selection
process seriously limits juries in capital cases to people
who share similar moral viewpoints. During the last four
decades, U.S. researchers have found that in capital cases
the people most likely to be chosen during the jury select-
ion process are those with "authoritarian" personality
types-people who believe that strict enforcement of laws
is needed to maintain social stability. Authoritarians
follow convention. They think the function of disciplinary
action is to control criminals. They predictably tend to
convict anyone (both the guilty and the innocent) who is
unfortunate enough to be indicted and brought to trial
before a jury. In other words, they believe one is guilty
until proven innocent, and are thus more likely to accept
the prosecution's case rather than the defendant's.
Psychologist and litigation consultant Brooke Butler's
research has shown that those on death-qualified juries
tend to believe in a fundamentally just world-people get
what they deserve and that everything that happens in a
person's life is a direct result of things they control.
She found that such jurors are more likely to make
decisions based on aggravating circumstances (the morbid
facts surrounding a victim's death, etc.) rather than
mitigating ones. They are more racist, sexist and homo-
phobic than their unselected counterparts, and less likely
to accept mental illness or age as a defense. Death-
qualified jurors are typically "male, Caucasian, moderate-
ly well-educated, politically conservative, Catholic or
Protestant, and middle-class," she says.
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Victoria Springer, social science researcher and sentencing
expert, argues that the people with authoritarian personal-
ity types who are typically selected to serve on death-
qualified juries will face a serious mental conflict.
These pro-crime-control jurors are required to "adopt the
attitude that the individual to be tried before them is
innocent until proven guilty-which stands in direct
opposition to their attitudes, orientation, and personality
that has been specifically selected for."
From there, it is easy to understand how for such people
the fundamental presumption of innocence conflicts with
what the prosecution presents to them as "the facts"-the
evidence, regardless of strength. Springer says that if
the assumption of innocence clashes with the death-
qualified juror's desire to remove a criminal from the
streets, then the decision to render a guilty verdict
reinforces what these jurors feel is their purpose on the
jury in the first place.
Cameron Willingham, wrongfully convicted and executed by a
Texas jury selected through the filter of "death qualific-
ation," was robbed of the right to have a jury of his peers
decide his fate. Instead, he was put to death by those of
his neighbors who innately believe that the American
judicial system is a bastion of truth.
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