ABSTRACT
This chapter reveals a troubling possibility: that hegemonic individualism prevents most jurors from considering contextualizing mitigation derived from environmental influences. Rather than being the epitome of individualism, as Elliot describes it, the Keller story can be read as a testament to the importance and power of social structural forces. The jurors appear to reject challenges to individualism. No juror recommended a life sentence because of the defendant's past or his social history. Jurors' sentencing recommendations, therefore, are not truly bifurcated into a guilt question and a sentencing question. The decision-making processes demonstrated by the jurors who recommended life is more pronounced, and far more concerning, among the jurors who voted for death. The interviews with numerous death supporters who served on cases with life majorities are instructive as to the jurors' preoccupations with culpability. In the death cases, too, the language of the jurors who rejected life history evidence seemed to mirror the language of the prosecuting attorneys.
