Veritas, Vol. 23, No. 07, February 1983

              For the Faculty, Staff and Friends of the University of Miami
Vol. 23, No. 7 February 1983
By Gustavo Pupo Mayo
At a time when 1,100 persons on death row await execution, a study published in mid-December questions the validity of their death sentences.
UM School of Law Professor Bruce J. Winick, in a study published by the University of Michigan Law Review, concluded that prosecutors systematically exclude from capital juries prospective jurors with attitudes against the death penalty.
This systematic exclusion of death-scrupled jurors, explains Winick, deprives capital defendants of their due-process right to an impartial jury on sentence.
It is likely this study will be used by death row residents in new challenges to their death sentences.
The “peremptory challenge” allows prosecutors to remove prospective jurors with-our stating a reason. The study demonstrated a systematic pattern in the use of peremptory challenges by prosecutors to exclude those with scruples against capital punishment, producing capital juries that are significantly more prone to return a death sentence and perhaps also to convict.
Winick says this results in the capital defendant being deprived of his due-process right to an impartial jury.
In addition, the practice distorts the representative character of capital juries by eliminating virtually all members of the community who oppose capital punishment. The article concludes that this violates the sixth amendment requirement that juries represent a fair cross-section of the community.
This requirement is particulary important
Professor Bruce J. Winick
in death cases, Winick says, as the substantial underrepresentation of capital punishment objectors on capital juries prevents such juries from serving as a link to contemporary community values regarding the death penalty.
Capital punishment is constitutional under the eighth amendment prohibition on cruel and unusual punishments only on the assumption that its continued imposition does not violate the enlightened conscience of the community. Thus, according to Pro-
fessor Winick, the eighth amendment requires that a capital jury be fairly representative of the community.
According to the article, the prosecutorial jury selection practices documented in the five-year study of Florida's Fourth Judicial Circuit, composed of Duval (Jacksonville), Clay and Nassau counties, render the death sentences returned there unconstitutional and may require the reversal of convictions as well.
Professor Winick says his study and the resulting constitutional consequences place a substantial cloud over the validity of death sentences imposed not only in Florida, which has the most inmates on death row, but throughout the country.
According to Professor Winick, many knowledgeable observers of the criminal process suggest that prosecutors throughout the country use their peremptory challenges in precisely the same way. Never before, however, has a study been performed to test this assumption.
The study also suggests that prosecutors have systematically used their peremptory challenges in order to avoid the restrictions placed on them by a 1968 Supreme Court case. That decision had limited the ability of prosecutors to use their challenges for cause to eliminate jurors with scruples against the death penalty. Only those whose views were such that they could never impose death or find guilt could be excluded for cause.
Professor Winick says it is likely his study will be used by death row residents in new challenges to their death sentences. In fact, the preliminary results of the study were used in a case presently pending in the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta.
If the courts accept these arguments, Winick says a substantial number of death sentences could be vacated.
Trustees of the U nh>ersity toured the campus recently from the vantage point of a double-decked bus. Kalvin Platt. a planning consultant. explained the recent campus renovations and identified sites targetedfor future change in the campus master plan which are subject to board approval.
Honors Day to be held March 1
The University wiH gather to honor its best and brightest undergraduate students March 1 in its annual Honors Day ceremony. Approximately 100 students representing all the undergraduate schools and the college will receive various honors resulting from their selection by faculty and deans.
The academic procession will begin from the Cox Science Building at 2:30 p.m. The honors program will begin in Gusman Concert Hall at 3 p.m. Music for the event will be provided by the University’s Symphony Orchestra with David Becker conducting. Guest speaker for the program will be Dr. Martin E. Marty, Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Modern Christianity, University of Chicago. A reception hosted by President Edward T. Foote II will be held in the Cox Lobby at 4:30.
On February 28 at 8 p.m., Dr. Marty will deliver the Honors Lecture in Gusman Hall. His topic wdll be “A Conflict of Humanisms. ”
Tickets wnll not be issued for the convocation as they have been in the past. Guests, students, administrators, and faculty not wishing to participate in the academic, procession wdll be seated in Gusman Hall beginning at 2 p.m.