Because of the Capital Jury Project, a nationwide research effort to examine the decision making process of capital jurors, we now know that the decision between life and death often turns on what jurors think about a defendant's eligibility for parole. Accordingly, capital jurors naturally worry that if they don't impose a death sentence, the defendant will be released on parole, only to repeat his crime. But these worries are often misplaced and even more often exaggerated. Most jurors believe that life imprisonment really means eventual parole. Yet when three strikes or similar laws are on the books, as is the case in Ramdass, that perception is wrong.
Life imprisonment means death in prison.
Moreover, even when parole is possible, jurors dramatically underestimate the amount of time the defendant will serve before he becomes eligible for parole. The less time a juror thinks the defendant will spend in prison before he might be released, the more likely the juror is to vote for death. Otherwise, a jury's decision to sentence a defendant to death will not represent a judgment that death is the punishment he truly deserves. It will instead represent the jury's often-erroneous belief that death was the only way to keep the defendant from doing future harm. Bobby Lee Ramdass may very well deserve the death penalty for his crimes.