Death qualification and the embrace of jury sentencing in capital cases

Because so few offenders — even so few murderers — are subject to capital punishment these days, the Supreme Court’s split ruling in Uttecht v. Brown (opinion herehere) likely has more symbolic import than practical impact.  (For those interested in the practicalities of capital jury selection, Karl Keys here at Capital Defense Weekly and Lyle Denniston here at SCOTUSblog cover this ground very well.)

Though various messages might be found in Uttecht v. Brown, I must highlight that the intricate (and widely-debated) issue of “death qualification” of jurors in capital cases flows from the broad consensus that jurors — and not judges — should be the primary sentencing decision-makers when death is an available sentencing option.  In my sentencing classes, I encourage students to contemplate exactly why society generally favors jury sentencing in the capital context and yet seems to resist jury sentencing in other settings.

Regular readers know that I have become a believer in Blakely rights, and the entire Blakely line of cases has led me to think a lot more about the virtues and vices of true jury sentencing in non-capital cases.  The Uttecht v. Brown ruling provides another opportunity to ponder just why true jury sentencing is the accepted norm in capital cases, but is the exception in most other types of criminal cases.