The Lasting Impact of Ring v. Arizona on Capital Jury Trials

The final decision on the imposition of the death penalty in the United States is made by either judges or juries. A wealth of empirical study has gone into comparing these two methods. Arizona, with its change to a jury-based system immediately after the landmark Supreme Court decision Ring v. Arizona, is divided into discrete eras of capital sentencing. For the first time, this article catalogs, and examines, the post-Ring capital trials that reached the question of life or death to explore systemic differences between jury and judge sentencings. The study revealed that while Arizona’s rate of death sentences increased after the introduction of jury sentencing, the number of capital trials significantly decreased and with far fewer appellate reversals. The study concludes that jury sentencing may not impact individual cases but is beneficial to capital defendants in the aggregate.