Death-Penalty Juror Describes ​“Anguish” of Imposing a Death Sentence

Lindy Isonhood (click to enlarge pic­ture) served on the Mississippi jury that sen­tenced Bobby Wilcher to death in 1994. In a com­men­tary pub­lished on Medium, she writes that the deci­sion to con­demn Wilcher ​“continue[s] to haunt me today.” Isonhood — whose expe­ri­ence as a death-penal­ty juror is the sub­ject of a new doc­u­men­tary film, Lindy Lou, Juror Number 2—explains how lit­tle she and her fel­low jurors knew about the death-penal­ty sys­tem when they were tasked with deter­min­ing Wilcher’s fate. They were unaware of the rar­i­ty of death sen­tences, the lack of ade­quate coun­sel, and chang­ing pub­lic atti­tudes toward cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. She describes feel­ing ​“guilt and com­plic­i­ty” for her role in Wilcher’s exe­cu­tion. ​“Judges, lawyers, prison guards, fam­i­lies of the vic­tims and fam­i­lies of the con­demned — along with ordi­nary jurors like myself — are swept into a world where judg­ments of death are hand­ed down, but every­one else is expect­ed to emerge untouched,” she wrote. The one-hour film, which will pre­miere on PBS on July 16, 2018, fol­lows Isonhood’s jour­ney to vis­it oth­er jurors from the case and dis­cuss their expe­ri­ences. Isonhood met with Wilcher before his exe­cu­tion, and said, ​“I saw him as a fel­low human being, flawed but car­ing, even towards me.” She con­cludes, ​“If I was called to serve on Bobby Wilcher’s jury today, I could not sen­tence him to death. I say this not because of what I learned about him before his exe­cu­tion, but because of what hand­ing down a death sen­tence can do to peo­ple like me. I no longer feel as guilty about my deci­sion in Bobby’s case, but I wish I could have fore­seen how it would affect me and my loved ones for the rest of my life.”

(Lindy Isonhood, The Unseen Anguish of a Death Sentence, Medium, July 2, 2018; Florent Vassault, Lindy Lou, Juror Number 2, POV, July 16, 2018.) See New Voices. Photo cour­tesy Lindy Lou, Juror Number 2. The film­mak­ers have cre­at­ed a toolk­it of mate­ri­als for schools and com­mu­ni­ty groups that would like to host a screen­ing and dis­cus­sion of the documentary.