Question

Before a person can sit on a jury for a capital punishment case, he or she must be “death qualified”. This means prospective jurors are asked about their views regarding the death penalty.

Those who would automatically vote for the death penalty or those who could not vote for the death penalty for conscience reasons are excused. This has been shown to stack the jury against the defendant because, generally, jurors are for the death penalty.

My questions to you are:

Is this an ethical way of deciding who sits on a death penalty jury?

Is there a better way to pick jury members?

Answer 1

A jury must be a group of people who are unbiased in all regards. By seiving people before they are part of the jury itself shows that the group are put together on some bias. As a result, this seems to be an unethical way of deciding on who sits for a death penalty jury. By doing so, the defendant does not have a fair chance in convincing the jury against the death penalty.

A better way would be to let there be a random selection of the jury who are psychologically fit to make the right and rational decision based on the court hearings instead of their own personal prejudice about the death penalty.