Source of article ComCon - Communication Consulting.

Prosecutors and defense attorneys present religious appeals and testimony about a defendant’s religious activities at trial to influence capital jurors’ sentencing. Religious appeals have been used in several high profile trials. In the trial of Andrea Yates, the mother in Texas who drowned her five children in her bathtub, the prosecutor told the jury “It was wrong in the eyes of God and it was wrong in the eyes of the law.” In the trial of Susan Smith, the mother who killed her two sons and invented a carjacking story to cover up the crime, the defense attorney told the Biblical story of Jesus saving an adulterous woman from being stoned. Miller and Bornstein (2006) recently explored the effects of religious appeals in capital sentencing decisions…