The Capital Jury Project (CJP) is a consortium of university-based research studies on the decision-making of jurors in death penalty cases in the United States.
Its findings are based on a standard protocol of in-depth interviews with past jurors in capital punishment trials.
The CJP was expanded to examine the role played by jurors' race in making death penalty decisions.
[7] As noted below, the race of the victim plays a substantial role in whether the jury finds mitigating factors that would allow a lesser sentence than the death penalty.
[4] One review of the CJP data showed that jurors who were asked a hypothetical question regarding how much certain mitigating factors would influence their sentencing decisions were true, 56.2 percent of the jurors would consider a lesser sentence than death if a history of mental illness was presented as a mitigating factor and 73.6 percent would do so if evidence of mental retardation were presented.
However, another review of the data showed the race of the victim had a substantial effect on jury failure to find mitigating factors.
[6][8] In fact, one researcher says that the pattern emerging from the CJP data is that jurors have serious misconceptions about the death penalty process, leading to confusion that produces a bias in favor of the death penalty, and concludes that the CJP research indicates that the jury decision making process is so flawed that it violated constitutional principles.