Exam 17: The Death Penalty

The process of death qualification excludes about a quarter to a third of potential jurors from serving on capital juries. The excluded jurors are more likely to possess the following characteristics, EXCEPT:

Blacks who kill whites are _____ likely to receive the death sentence compared with whites who kill blacks. Black death row inmates convicted of killing white victims also have the _____ probability of being executed rather than dying of natural causes.

Following Gregg v. Georgia and its companion cases, all death sentences are:

Research shows that jurors find instructions given to them by the courts in capital murder trials difficult to understand and often confusing. As a result, their decisions are often influenced by:

Which of the following is NOT a result of Gregg v. Georgia (1976) and its companion cases?

It is often asserted that the majority of Americans ____ the death penalty. However, if people are asked to compare the death penalty with an alternative of life imprisonment, most respondents choose _____ as a more acceptable punishment.

Part of the reason for the Supreme Court decision in Roper v. Simmons (2005) was a result of research findings showing that key psychological capacities of juveniles are not fully developed compared to adults. These key capacities include all of the following, EXCEPT:

Since the abolition of slavery, there has been an enduring effect of race on how the defendant is sentenced. Evidence of racial discrimination in sentencing defendants to death is clearest in cases involving:

In Gregg v. Georgia (1976), and in companion cases, the Supreme Court set up a series of reforms. These reforms are referred to as the:

Interestingly, there appears to be a tendency for an increase in murders for a short while following an execution. One possible explanation is that executions may desensitize people to killing. This phenomenon is referred to as the _____ effect.

Politicians and conservative talk show hosts often state that most Americans favor the death penalty. However, this assertion:

Mitigating factors in capital cases are characteristics that make:

People sentenced to death spend, on average, about _____ on death row between conviction and execution, and this interval has been _____ in recent years.

Most democracies in the Western hemisphere _____ the death penalty. In the United States, however, the opposite is true. In fact, _____ of the U.S. states have the death penalty.

In Atkins v. Virginia (2002), the Supreme Court has put an end to executions of convicted criminals deemed:

Is the death penalty an effective deterrent to murder? What are some methods of answering this question?

In protest of the death penalty, many countries:

In Baze v. Rees (2008), the Supreme Court ruled that the use of lethal injection for administering the death penalty _____. This decision was later _____ in Glossip v. Gross (2015).

Four of the states listed below account for over 50% of executions in the United States. Which one of them is responsible for more than a third of all U.S. executions since 1976?

Even after blacks and whites became equal under the law, discrimination persisted. For most of the twentieth century, racial discrimination in the application of the death penalty was especially evident in cases involving: