The Sinners, The Saints, and The Statutes: The Role One’s Belief in Hell May Play in Death Penalty Application

Abstract

Through the conduction of this survey project, featuring over 700 respondents in 15 states of and around The US Bible Belt, I sought to identify what key aspects of religiosity may serve as predictors for a juror’s strong support of capital punishment. This project examined the religious and legal perspectives of Catholic and Evangelical Protestant respondents to reveal what ideologies may lead to the greatly differing death penalty attitudes between these two historically similarly situated denominations. What this study ultimately revealed is that Belief in Hell - may be a key aspect of religiosity that leads a person to have a strong support for capital punishment. The causal mechanism for this relationship is the intrinsic value of punishment, as opposed to the instrumental value of punishment (which correlates with the rehabilitative aspects of a belief in Purgatory). Through identifying a key predictor for strong death penalty support (Belief in Hell -), attorneys can then consider this variable when attempting to control for jury bias on capital punishment cases, as a predetermined strong support for capital punishment often results in inappropriate death penalty application.