Tinkering with the machinery of death - An analysis of the impact of legislative reform on the sentencing of capital murderers in Texas

In response to the US Supreme Court's holding in Penry v. Lynaugh, the Texa s Legislature modified the State's capital sentencing statute. An additiona l question was added to the special issues framework that was designed expl icitly to focus jurors' attention on mitigating circumstances as mandated b y the Court. In order to measure the impact of the decision, data were exam ined from 192 death penalty trials from the two-year periods prior to and a fter the revisions were implemented. The results of this study indicate tha t the legislative reform had little influence on the sentencing of capital defendants. The level of future dangerousness posed by defendants remains t he primary determinant of decisions made by juries after the legislative re form. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.