Jurors displace moral responsibility onto incomprehensible sentencing instructions.

Evidence

Jurors distance themselves in a variety of ways from the decision to condemn a person to death. They displace responsibility by construing their decision as compelled by the sentencing instructions. Jurors are provided with decision rules and a set of mitigating and aggravating factors that they must take into account in deciding the severity of the penalty. In tests of comprehensibility, jurors have only a poor understanding of sentencing instructions (Eisenberg & Wells, 1993; Haney, 2005). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1995

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Milgrom’s work on how institutions substitute for individual judgment — here the institution (sentencing law) lets individuals abdicate responsibility rather than enabling cooperation. — connects to: Capital punishment was struck down because juries imposed it arbitrarily and freakishly. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2002; Formal written jury instructions became opaque to the juries they supposedly guided. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2316
• SEED: Essay angle: incomprehensible legal jargon as a moral disengagement technology — the more opaque the rules, the easier it is to displace responsibility for death sentences.