Document Type
Article
Subject Area
General Law Division
Abstract
The final decision on the imposition of the death penalty in the United States is made by either judges or juries. A wealth of empirical study has gone into comparing these two methods. Arizona, with its change to a jury-based system immediately after the landmark Supreme Court decision Ring v. Arizona, is divided into discrete eras of capital sentencing. For the first time, this article catalogs, and examines, the post-Ring capital trials that reached the question of life or death to explore systemic differences between jury and judge sentencings. The study revealed that while Arizona’s rate of death sentences increased after the introduction of jury sentencing, the number of capital trials significantly decreased and with far fewer appellate reversals. The study concludes that jury sentencing may not impact individual cases but is beneficial to capital defendants in the aggregate.
DOI
10.59643/1942-9916.1522
Rights
Copyright © 2025 by the Wyoming Law Review unless otherwise noted. Except as otherwise provided, copies of any article may be made for classroom use, provided that: (1) Copies are distributed at or below cost; (2) The author and journal are identified; (3) Proper notice of copyright is affixed to each copy; and (4) The Wyoming Law Review is notified of the use.
Recommended Citation
Morrow, Kevin M.
(2025)
"The Lasting Impact of Ring v. Arizona on Capital Jury Trials,"
Wyoming Law Review: Vol. 25:
No.
2, Article 3.
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.uwyo.edu/wlr/vol25/iss2/3