The Supreme Court unexpectedly issued a decision today that is a virtual death sentence for petitioner Lonnie Weeks. The ruling is directly contradicted by the findings of a study at Cornell University Law School. The Supreme Court held today in Weeks v. Angelone that when a capital-sentencing jury asks for clarification of a critical sentencing instruction, the trial court is under no obligation to answer them. The defendant, Weeks, argued that the jurors who sentenced him to death were confused, and didn't understand the law, which is why they asked for clarification. The five-member court majority rejected the claim. The court presumed that the jury, despite its question, understood the law. The chance that the jury was confused, wrote Chief Justice Rehnquist, was "at best" only a "slight possibility."

But a study to be published in March in the Cornell Law Review belies the Supreme Court's conclusion. The study empaneled 154 mock jurors in Virginia, where the real case was initially tried. Some received the same instructions as the actual jury in Weeks. Others received the clarification the judge could have provided, but didn't provide. The study found that jurors who received nothing but the original instruction were far more confused and more likely to impose the death penalty than those who received the clarification. The results demonstrate that, more likely than not, Weeks, the defendant in the capital case, is under a sentence of death simply because the jurors' question went unanswered.

The study was conducted by Stephen Garvey, associate professor of law, and Sheri Lynn Johnson, professor of law at Cornell, and Paul Marcus, a faculty member at William and Mary Law School. For information, contact Garvey, (607) 255-8589 or (607) 277-4322, or Alison Nathan, editor-in-chief, Cornell Law Review, (607) 255-3387, ajn2@cornell.edu, or see the web pages below.