CONSTRUING MOTIVE IN VIDEOTAPED KILLINGS - THE ROLE OF JURORS ATTITUDES TOWARD THE DEATH-PENALTY

Death-qualified jurors are generally able to impose the death penalty, whereas excludable jurors are generally either unable or unwilling to do so. A long line of research studies has shown that the former are more likely than the latter to convict criminal defendants. Ellsworth (1993) argues that jurors' attitudes toward the death penalty predict verdicts because they are embedded in a cluster of beliefs and theorie s about the criminal justice system. Her studies show that jurors inte rpret ambiguous conduct based on these belief structures. The present study examines the possibility that death penalty attitudes also influ ence jurors' conceptions of criminal intent. We showed mock jurors the filmed murder of a convenience store clerk and examined the inference s they drew from this evidence. Jurors who favored the death penalty t ended to read criminal intent into the defendant's actions and jurors who opposed the death penalty were less likely to do so. These data pr ovide further explanation of the conviction-proneness of death-qualifi ed jurors.