A recent Newsweek arti­cle notes that a grow­ing num­ber of jurors in cap­i­tal mur­der cas­es are voic­ing their con­cerns about the accu­ra­cy and fair­ness of the jus­tice sys­tem. Some of these jurors have peti­tioned the legal author­i­ties to cor­rect injus­tices regard­ing pos­si­bly inno­cent or incor­rect­ly sen­tenced inmates.

​“I felt like I was pushed into mak­ing the deci­sion of the 10 oth­er jurors. I did­n’t feel com­fort­able with it, but I did­n’t know my rights as a juror,” said Sylvia Coeburn, one of the jurors who sen­tenced Kenneth Boyd of North Carolina to death near­ly 20 years ago. Coeburn and anoth­er juror from the case, Sue Griffin, peti­tioned the gov­er­nor for clemen­cy in Boyd’s case, but on December 2, 2005, he became the nation’s 1,000 per­son to be exe­cut­ed since cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment was rein­stat­ed in 1976.

In 2004, six jurors plead­ed for clemen­cy on behalf of Darnell Williams, an Indiana man on death row. The jurors not­ed that a key wit­ness in the case had recant­ed cru­cial tes­ti­mo­ny and that DNA tests had cast doubt on Williams’ guilt. The gov­er­nor com­mut­ed Williams’ death sen­tence to life in prison. In Louisiana, Kathleen Hawk Norman, a jury fore­woman who vot­ed in 1996 to exe­cute Dan Bright, lat­er filed an ami­cus brief on his behalf. Bright was lat­er exon­er­at­ed and freed from death row, and Norman went on to start Jurors for Justice, a group to advo­cate for those haunt­ed by death ver­dicts and to aid con­demned inmates. Norman said she found­ed the group in hon­or of Bright, who had told her, ​“You were used like I was used. Do me a favor — don’t for­get about the oth­ers.”

(Newsweek, December 12, 2005). See New Voices. For a more in-depth dis­cus­sion of this and relat­ed issues, see DPIC’s lat­est report, Blind Justice: Juries Deciding Life and Death With Only Half the Truth. 

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