In his new book ​“Jurors’ Stories of Death: How America’s Death Penalty Invests in Inequality,” author Benjamin Fleury-Steiner draws on real-life accounts of white and black jurors in cap­i­tal tri­als to dis­cuss the effect of race on the sen­tenc­ing process. Through his sur­vey of the jurors’ expe­ri­ences, he reveals that race is often a fac­tor in sen­tenc­ing and that the U.S. jus­tice sys­tem can fos­ter an ​“us ver­sus them” men­tal­i­ty among jurors serv­ing in cap­i­tal tri­als. Fleury-Steiner finds that the the jurors, who fre­quent­ly view them­selves as more law abid­ing and moral than the indi­vid­ual on tri­al, can have dif­fi­cul­ty look­ing beyond that mind­set as they exam­ine com­plex mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence in deter­min­ing the fate of often mar­gin­al­ized defen­dants. The book con­cludes that end­ing the death penal­ty is a cru­cial step toward elim­i­nat­ing the racism and clas­sism that cur­rent­ly taints social rela­tions in the U.S. Noted death penal­ty attor­ney Bryan Stevenson of Alabama remarked, ​“This illu­mi­nat­ing and insight­ful exam­i­na­tion of jury delib­er­a­tions makes a ter­rif­ic con­tri­bu­tion to the study of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Fleury-Steiner’s syn­the­sis of soci­o­log­i­cal, legal and the­o­ret­i­cal con­cepts with vivid juror nar­ra­tives and sta­tis­ti­cal data, thought­ful­ly ani­mates and details how race and class con­scious­ness con­tin­ue to shape America’s death penal­ty.” (University of Michigan Press, 2004). See Race. See also, Resources.

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