A Life and Death Decision A Jury Weighs the Death Penalty [Paperback]

With a life in the balance, a jury convicts a man of murder and now has to decide whether he should be put to death. Twelve people now face a momentous choice.
Bringing drama to life, A Life and Death Decision gives unique insight into how a jury deliberates. We feel the passions, anger, and despair as the jurors grapple with legal, moral, and personal dilemmas. The jurors' voices are compelling. From the idealist to the holdout, the individual storiesof how and why they voted for life or deathdrive the narrative. The reader is right there siding with one or another juror in this riveting read.
From movies to novels to television, juries fascinate. Focusing on a single case, Sundby sheds light on broader issues, including the roles of race, class, and gender in the justice system. With death penalty cases consistently in the news, this is an important window on how real jurors deliberate about a pressing national issue.

Scott E. Sundbyis the Sydney and Frances Lewis professor of law, Washington and Lee University, and has worked on both the prosecution and defense sides in a variety of criminal cases and has testified as an expert witness on the death penalty and other legal issues.

In this most recent publication from the prolific capital jury project, Sundby (law, Washington and Lee Univ.) reports the details of a single murder case as it unfolds, from the shifting perspectives of the jurors who have to decide whether to impose the death penalty. The defendant's guilt is certain; however, the narratives show that the various jurors view him through the frames of their own values and that they differ markedly from one another in the ways in which they reconstruct the crime. Confirming the findings of most other recent jury studies, Sundby finds that these conscripts approach their task conscientiously, determined to do justice. But he also finds that even when the legal requirements are clear, it proves surprisingly difficult for mol£­