Trial procedure itself biases jurors toward the death penalty after a guilty verdict

Evidence

The factors included in the conditional list can influence the penalty that the jury is likely to impose. For example, the scope of the mitigating factors tend to be more limited and, because the jurors already have found the defendant guilty, they have more difficulty weighing mitigating circumstances, which would decrease the gravity of the crime. The sequencing of the two decisional phases also favors a death verdict. Given that jurors have already judged the defendant guilty in the guilt phase of the trial, they tend to focus on aggravating factors in the penalty phase as further justification for their decision to impose the death penalty. Haney (2005) coined the phrase “structural aggravation” to identify this built-in focus on aggravating factors, which arises out of the jurors’ desire to punish the person whom they have already found guilty. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2004

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Haney’s term ‘structural aggravation’ — the built-in aggravating bias created by sequencing guilt and penalty phases.
• XREF: This is a specific instance of the broader disengagement mechanism where a prior commitment (guilty verdict) shapes subsequent moral weighing — parallels Bandura’s general account of how routinized stepwise processes diffuse moral responsibility. — connects to: Capital punishment was struck down because juries imposed it arbitrarily and freakishly. — G. Alan Tarr, Judicial Process and Judicial…, 2002
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 2004