“Love, What Have You Done to Me?” Eros and agape in Alfred Hitchcock\u27s I Confess

Despite its pre-Vatican II setting, Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess (1953) has retained a notable relevance in the twenty-first century. Although the titular act of confession is unsurprisingly significant, the diegesis actually foregrounds Matrimony and Holy Orders – two sacraments that remain under the spotlight during a tumultuous era for the Catholic Church. Alongside the traditional Hitchcockian theme of “an innocent man wrongly accused,” the plot really hinges on love – a subject that is intelligible to people of all religions and none. While examining the mise-en-scène of the director’s most Catholic film, this article offers an exploration of I Confess as a cinematic reflection on the complexities of eros and agape for both the laity and the priesthood

A Stubborn Legacy: The Overwhelming Importance of Race in Jury Selection in 173 Post-Batson North Carolina Capital Trials

Among those who laud its mission, it seems that the only people not disappointed in Batson are those who never expected it to work in the first place. Scholars, judges, and practitioners have criticized the decision for its failure to curb the role of racial stereotypes in jury election. Likewise, previous research in North Carolina has suggested both that race continues to play a role in jury selection and that courts are reluctant to enforce Batson rigorously. Recently, however, the North Carolina General Assembly passed legislation aimed at curing this defect by providing trial courts a unique opportunity to consider the role of race in peremptory challenges from a different angle. The North Carolina Racial Justice Act of 2009 (“RJA”) created a state claim for relief for defendants currently on death row who can show that race was a significant factor in the exercise of peremptory challenges in their cases. A defendant who makes such a showing is entitled to have a death sentence reduced to life without parole. The RJA expressly deems a broad range of evidence relevant by allowing claimants to prove their cases using “statistical evidence or other evidence, including, but not limited to, sworn testimony of attorneys, prosecutors, law enforcement officers, jurors, or other members of the criminal justice system or both.” This Article presents the results of a study undertaken in order to evaluate the potential for statistical evidence to support claims under this part of the RJA. In particular, we examined how prosecutors exercised peremptory challenges in capital trials of all defendants on death row in North Carolina as of July 1, 2010, to assess whether potential jurors’ race played any role in those decisions. We found substantial disparities in which potential jurors prosecutors struck. Over the twenty-year period we examined, prosecutors struck eligible black venire members at about 2.5 times the rate they struck eligible venire members who were not black. These disparities remained consistent over time and across the state, and did not diminish when we controlled for information about venire members that potentially bore on the decision to strike them, such as views on the death penalty or prior experience with crime. In Part II, we review the prior research on jury selection, particularly on the issue of racial bias. In Part III, we present our study methodology and design. Part IV presents the statewide unadjusted racial disparities in prosecutors’ exercise of peremptory strikes, and Part V presents the results of analyses controlling for other factors potentially relevant to jury selection

Grounding Criminal Procedure

Article published in the Journal of Gender, Race & Justice

Confronting Race: How a Confluence of Social Movements Convinced North Carolina to Go where the McCleskey Court Wouldn’t

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Report on Jury Selection Study

This report documents the study design, methodology, analysis, and results for a study on the exercise of peremptory challenges during jury selection in trials of all defendants on death row in North Carolina as of July 1, 2010. The study examined how prosecutors exercised peremptory challenges in capital cases to assess whether potential jurors’ race played any role in those decisions. The primary investigators for the study are Barbara O’Brien and Catherine Grosso. Both are associate professors of law at Michigan State University College of Law

Examining Jurors: Applying Conversation Analysis to Voir Dire in Capital Cases, a First Look

Scholarship about racial disparities in jury selection is extensive, but the data about how parties examine potential jurors in actual trials is limited. This study of jury selection for 792 potential jurors across twelve randomly selected North Carolina capital cases uses conversation analysis to examine the process that produces decisions about who serves on juries. To examine how race influences conversations in voir dire, we adapted the Roter Interaction Analysis System, a widely used framework for understanding the dynamics of patient–clinician communication during clinical encounters, to the legal setting for the first time. This method allows us to document the conversational dynamics of actual questioning of potential jurors that precedes the decision to seat or strike a juror, or to excuse her for cause. Our preliminary analysis of this uniquely rich archival data suggests ways in which the discourse of jury selection varies by race, and provides the foundation for future work looking at the ways in which the evaluation of fitness for jury service itself is skewed and contributes to racial disparities in jury selection