The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice and prepared the following final report: Document Title: Doing Death in Texas: Language and Jury Decision-Making in Texas Death Penalty Trials Author: Robin Helene Conley Document No.: 236354 Date Received: November 2011 Award Number: 2009-IJ-CX-0005 This report has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice. To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federally- funded grant final report available electronically in addition to traditional paper copies. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Doing Death in Texas: Language and Jury Decision-Making in Texas Death Penalty Trials A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology by Robin Helene Conley 2011 This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. This dissertation is dedicated first to my parents for their intellect, patience, and love. I dedicate it also to my unparalleled advisors: Alessandro Duranti, Elinor Ochs, Candy Goodwin, John Heritage and Justin Richland. iii This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Introduction.......................................................................................... ....p. 1 1.1 The death penalty in Texas..................................................... ....p. 2 1.2 Individuals and collectivities.............................................. ...p. 5 1.2a Legal and state personhood............................ ...........................p. 5 1.2b The particular and generalizable in law............ ........................p. 8 1.3 Legal processes as translation........................................... .........p. 11 1.4 Contributions to legal theory and practice........................ .........p. 13 1.5 Research design and methods........................................... .........p. 16 1.6 Overview of chapters........................................................ .........p. 24 2. Texas Justice: Locating place in ethnography.................................. ........p. 27 2.1 The concept of place in ethnography................................. .........p. 27 2.2 Place and identity in interaction........................................ .........p. 31 2.2a Constructing locality.................... .............................................p. 32 2.3 We are Texas: Inclusive pronouns and distinction in the production of identity................................................. ..........p. 36 2.4 Local justice: Distinguishing Texas, place and identity......... ....p. 44 2.4a Local variation..................................................................... .....p. 47 2.5 An eye for an eye: Christianity and the death penalty............ ....p. 52 2.6 “Somewhere down in Texas”: Texas as the country............... ....p. 56 2.7 Being a good juror in Texas and America.............................. .....p. 60 2.8 Deixis, place and identity...................................................... ......p. 62 2.9 Concluding remarks.............................................................. ......p. 68 3. Empathy, emotion and objectivity in death penalty trials................... ......p. 70 3.1 Defining empathy................................................................... .....p. 71 3.1a Empathy and culture...................................................... ............p. 75 3.1b Empathy and similarity................................................ ..............p. 78 3.2 Empathy vs. rationality in law.................................................. ...p. 81 3.3 Empathy and embodiment....................................................... ....p. 84 3.4 Mind/body dualism within the law.......................................... ....p. 86 3.5 Jurors' ideologies about reason, emotion and the law............. ....p. 88 3.6 Empathy and emotion as embedded in reason.................. ..........p. 97 3.7 Moral blameworthiness and emotional displays................... ......p. 100 3.8 Language, empathy and emotion........................................... .....p. 102 3.8a Legal language, emotion and sincerity.................. ....................p. 106 3.9 Empathy and emotion in death penalty trials.................. ............p. 108 3.9a Mediation of embodiment in court............................ ................p. 114 3.9b The face........................................ .............................................p. 121 3.9c Expectations of remorse.................. ..........................................p. 123 3.9d Mediating the defendant's voice........ ........................................p. 131 3.9e Defendants' demeanor.............. ..................................................p. 142 iv This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. 3.10 Concluding remarks....................................... ............................p. 144 4. Living with the decision that someone will die: Linguistic distance in jurors' accounts of death penalty decisions............ ............p. 147 4.1 Introduction..................................................... .............................p. 147 4.2 Proximity, empathy and deixis.................................................. ...p. 149 4.3 Linguistic deixis and expanding the notion of proximity.......... ..p. 153 4.4 Linguistic deixis and moral relationships.................................. ..p. 156 4.5 Demonstrative reference as negotiating distance...................... ...p. 158 4.6 An analytic example of demonstrative reference and proximity ........p. 162 4.7 Examples of demonstrative reference as negotiating distance... ..p. 163 4.7a An illustrative example..................................................... ..........p. 164 4.7b Analyzing demonstrative reference forms.............................. ....p. 167 4.7c Examples of repair. p. 168 4.8 Analyses of a variety of demonstrative referenceforms and their distancing functions................................ .......................p. 169 4.8a Distal and proximal demonstrative references.................. .........p. 170 4.8b Demonstrative reference and dehumanization.................. .........p. 173 4.9 Jurors' linguistic and psychic distance from their decisions.... ....p. 175 4.10 Agency and demonstrative reference................... ......................p. 177 4.10a Demonstrative reference and defendants' criminal agency.. ...p. 178 4.10b Agency and demonstrative reference in jurors' penalty decisions p.184 4.11 Demonstrative reference and positive affect...................... ........p. 185 4.12 Empathy between speaker and hearer................................. .......p. 187 4.13 Examples from other jury data............................................ .......p. 189 4.14 Progression from direct to indirect reference as a distancing tactic p. 190 4.15 Concluding remarks.................... ...............................................p. 193 5. Linguistic and legal agency in death penalty trials................................. ...p. 195 5.1 Introduction................................................................... ...............p. 195 5.2 Grammatical agency....................................................... ..............p. 195 5.2a What is an agent?....................................................... .................p. 197 5.3 Legal and linguistic definitions of agency............................... .....p. 200 5.3a Mitigated and distributed agency......................................... .......p. 202 5.4 Identifying authority for capital sentencing decisions........... .......p. 203 5.5 Jurors' individual responsibility for sentencing decisions..... .......p. 211 5.6 Voir dire: Learning how to decide......................................... .......p. 214 5.7 Grammatical agency in jurors’ reflections on sentencing decisions p. 224 5.7a Grammatical agency in jurors' decisions..................... ...............p. 227 5.7b Group agency and anonymity.......................... ...........................p.