Opinion ID: 1407576
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 10

Heading: The Harris 1971 Study [74]

Text: In 1971 the Harris Poll organization conducted a nationwide survey regarding capital punishment. The subjects of the study were 2,068 adults, who comprised a stratified sample of the adult population of the United States. [75] These subjects were given direct person-to-person interviews lasting about an hour. One portion of the interview involved a conviction-proneness study. The subject/jurors were presented with a card containing certain instructions. The subject/jurors were told to assume that they were members of a jury in a criminal case and that they had to determine their verdicts from the evidence presented. They were instructed to keep three legal rules in mind: the concept of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, the fact that the prosecution has the burden of proof, and the rule that the accused is not required to testify. The subject/jurors were then presented detailed written descriptions of four criminal cases. These were referred to throughout the hearing below as the typewriter robbery, the manslaughter case, the assaulting an officer case, and the automobile larceny case. The subject/jurors were provided with written legal definitions of the crimes for which each accused was on trial. They were told to use that definition in order to assess the accused's guilt or innocence. The subject/jurors were also asked whether in a murder trial there would be any situations in which you might vote for the death penalty, or do you think you could never vote for the death penalty, regardless of the circumstances? This question differentiated the automatic life imprisonment group from the rest of the populace (i.e., the Witherspoon qualified group, which in the chart below petitioner calls the death qualified jurors). (Cf., ante, fn. 71.) It was found that in all four of the cases presented, the automatic life imprisonment jurors (petitioner calls these the excludables) voted to convict less often than did the remaining jurors. In three of the four cases, the differences were highly significant (p value less than .01) and in the fourth case, the difference was marginally significant (p value less than .10). Combining each groups' votes across all four cases revealed an overall difference of 7 percent in the frequency with which these groups voted to convict. These results are portrayed below.