{"id":2758,"date":"2026-08-21T15:07:57","date_gmt":"2026-08-21T19:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/?page_id=2758"},"modified":"2026-08-21T15:08:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-21T19:08:12","slug":"towards-death-disqualifications-debunking-lockhart-v-mccree-on-sixth-amendment-and-originalist-grounds-to-dismantle-the-practice-of-death-qualifying-capital-cases","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/in-print\/volume-63-number-3-summer-2026\/towards-death-disqualifications-debunking-lockhart-v-mccree-on-sixth-amendment-and-originalist-grounds-to-dismantle-the-practice-of-death-qualifying-capital-cases\/","title":{"rendered":"Towards Death Disqualifications: Debunking Lockhart v. McCree on Sixth Amendment and Originalist Grounds to Dismantle the Practice of Death Qualifying Capital Cases"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <em>Lockhart v. McCree<\/em>, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the practice of death-qualifying capital juries did not violate the Sixth Amendment\u2019s fair-cross-section requirement or right to an impartial jury. As a result, prospective jurors who are so opposed to capital punishment that they would not (1) find the defendant guilty regardless of the evidence or (2) consider death as a possible sentence regardless of the circumstances of the crime are automatically excluded \u201cfor cause\u201d from capital jury service.<\/p>\n<p>It is now widely accepted, however, that far from producing a law-abiding jury that considers all sentencing options, death qualification \u201csystematically \u2018whitewashes\u2019 the capital eligible [jury] pool [and] leaves behind a subgroup that does not represent the views of its community\u201d and that is \u201cuncommonly conviction-and-death prone.\u201d\n\t\t<span class='js-footnote footnote'>\n\t\t\t<button type='button' aria-controls='abstract_footnote_2758_1' class='footnote_inline_btn js-footnote-toggle-btn' aria-describedby='footnote_btn_text_abstract_footnote_2758_1'>\n\t\t\t\t<sup class='footnote_inline_btn_number'>1<\/sup>\n\t\t\t\t<span id='footnote_btn_text_abstract_footnote_2758_1' class='visually_hide'>Open footnote #1<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/button>\n\t\n\t\t\t<cite id='abstract_footnote_2758_1' class='footnote_content_cite js-footnote-content'>\n\t\t\t\t<span class='footnote_content_wrap'>\n\t\t\t\t\t<button type='button' class='footnote_content_number js-footnote-toggle-btn' aria-controls='abstract_footnote_2758_1' tabindex='-1'>1<\/button>\n\t\n\t\t\t\t\t<span class='footnote_content_wrap_inner'>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class='footnote_content'>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class='visually_hide'>Footnote #1 content: <\/span>Mona Lynch &amp; Craig Haney, <em>Death Qualification in Black and White: Racialized Decision Making and Death-Qualified Juries<\/em>, 40 LAW &amp; POL\u2019Y 148, 165 (2018) [hereinafter Lynch &amp; Haney, <em>Death Qualification in Black and White<\/em>] (quoting Aliza P. Cover, <em>The Eight Amendment\u2019s Lost Jurors: Death Qualification and Evolving Standards of Decency<\/em>, 92 IND. L. J. 113, 121 (2016)).\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class='footnote_close_btn_wrap'>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<button type='button' class='footnote_close_btn js-footnote-close-btn' aria-label='Back to content'>close<\/button>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/cite>\n\t\t<\/span>\n\t This problem has led several academics and practitioners to mount legal challenges to dismantle the practice of death qualification. This Note adds to that existing literature in its call to put the practice of death qualification to death.<\/p>\n<p>First, I survey the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s jury selection jurisprudence to expose a doctrinal inconsistency: the Court condemns discriminatory jury selection practices under the Fourteenth Amendment while affirming death qualification under the Sixth Amendment, even though it effectively constitutes a discriminatory jury selection practice. Then, I rebut the Court\u2019s opinion in <em>Lockhart v. McCree<\/em> by utilizing (1) the Court\u2019s own test, proffered in <em>Duren v. Missouri<\/em>, to identify a violation of the Sixth Amendment\u2019s fair-cross-section requirement and (2) modern empirical evidence to identify a violation of the Sixth Amendment\u2019s right to an impartial jury. Finally, I use the nineteenth-century judicial decisions from which the practice of death-qualifying capital juries arose as a case study to demonstrate how death qualification cannot be squared with either the original public meaning of, or original intent underlying, the Sixth Amendment\u2019s right to an impartial jury. Ultimately, I contend that dismantling the practice of death-qualifying capital juries\u2014a necessary result of my rebuttal of <em>Lockhart<\/em>\u2014is supported by an originalist assessment.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/2026\/08\/63.3-Nahoum.pdf\">Continue reading Towards Death Disqualifications: Debunking <em>Lockhart v. McCree<\/em> on Sixth Amendment and Originalist Grounds to Dismantle the Practice of Death Qualifying Capital Cases<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Lockhart v. McCree, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the practice of death-qualifying capital juries did not violate the Sixth Amendment\u2019s fair-cross-section requirement or right to an impartial jury. As a result, prospective jurors who are so opposed to capital punishment that they would not (1) find the defendant guilty regardless of the evidence [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"parent":2742,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2758","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2758"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2760,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2758\/revisions\/2760"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/american-criminal-law-review\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}