This website provides access to the work of the Capital Jury Project (CJP). The CJP is a continuing program of research on the decision-making of capital jurors. It was initiated in 1991 by a consortium of university-based researches with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The findings of the CJP are based on 3-4 hour in-depth interviews with persons who have served as jurors in capital trials. The interviews chronicle the jurors' experiences and decision-making over the course of the trial, identify points at which various influences come into play, and reveal the ways in which jurors reach their final sentencing decisions.

The CJP seeks to learn whether jurors' exercise of capital sentencing discretion under modern capital statutes conforms to constitutional standards, whether these statutes have remedied the arbitrariness ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Furman v. Georgia (1972). The CJP has been guided by the following research objectives: (1) to systematically describe jurors' exercise of capital sentencing discretion; (2) to assess the extent of arbitrariness in jurors' exercise of capital discretion; and (3) to evaluate the efficacy of the principal forms of capital statutes in controlling arbitrariness in capital sentencing. The CJP has recently been extended with NSF support to examine in detail the role played by jurors' race in making the life or death sentencing decision.

Interviews have been completed with 1198 jurors from 353 capital trials in 14 states. The states were selected to represent the various forms capital statutes have taken since 1972 when the U.S. Supreme Court declared all earlier capital statues unconstitutional. Samples of 20-30 capital trials were selected in each state and a target sample of four jurors was drawn for interviews in each case. The juror interviews obtained data through both structured questions with predetermined response options and open-ended questions that call for detailed narrative accounts of the respondent's experiences as a capital jurors. The principal CJP publications have sought to draw upon both the statistical data and the accounts of the jurors in their own words.

Some 30 articles based on the CJP data have been published. This website provides:

• An updated listing of CJP based articles, commentaries, and doctoral dissertations published or presently in progress with source references and links to electronic data archives, and
• The full text of five of the principal CJP publications as they appear in print, including statistical tabulations not usually present in on-line electronic archives (e.g., Nexis/Lexis, West/Law)

The CJP is directed by William J. Bowers (Ph.D. Sociology, Columbia University, 1966). He is the Principal Research Scientist in the College of Criminal Justice, Northeastern University. He has authored two books and numerous articles on capital punishment. His books include Executions in America, Lexington Books (1974) and Legal Homicide: Death as Punishment in America, 1864 – 1982, Northeastern University Press (1984). His articles have reported the punishment, the brutalizing effects of executions, and the punishment attitudes and preferences of citizens and legislators with respect to first-degree murder. For his research on capital punishment, Dr. Bowers received the American Society of Criminology's August Vollmer Award (2000) for outstanding contributions in applied criminology.

The management of the CJP data and the coordination of the second phase of CJP research program to examine the role race plays in capital sentencing are the responsibility of Michael E. Antonio (Ph.D. Law, Policy, & Society. Northeastern University, 2003). He is the Senior Research Scientist and the Lead Project Manager in the Criminal Justice Research Center in the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University. Antonio has a B.S. in Psychology from Ursinus College in Collegeville, Pennsylvania and he is interested in studying the impact of psychological factors including appearance and status characteristics on jurors' decision-making behaviors and trial outcomes.