The abuse excuse a bummer with juries

Alan Dershowitz:

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Media reports of Moussaoui's courtroom antics certainly do not inspire confidence in his emotional balance. But using a bum childhood as a vehicle to mitigate a sentence is a questionable gambit.

The "bum childhood" defense has become so pervasive that we often forget that there are more successful mitigating arguments. Studies suggest that a defendant's expression of remorse is far more likely to resonate with a capital jury than a claim of personal unaccountability. Professor Stephen Garvey showed in the Columbia Law Review that, in a comprehensive investigation into the weight jurors give to aggravating and mitigating factors, a full 39.8 percent of respondents said that the defendant's lack of remorse made them more likely to vote for death (including 21.7 percent who said that lack of remorse made them much more likely). According to Garvey, "only the defendant's prior history of violent crime and future dangerousness were more aggravating than lack of remorse."

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This finding is not too surprising when contemplating who deserves to die. Opponents of the death penalty overlook one of its unquestionable virtues. It is a 100 percent effective in stopping recidivism.