Positioning of bodies

Trials are social encounters, as highlighted previously, and as such involve often repeated face-to-face contact between jurors and defendants. In this sense, the participants in a trial are in constant “dialogue” with one another (Hollan & Throop Reference Hollan, Throop, Hollan and Throop2010:3), though not a dialogue that necessarily involves spoken language. Rather, jurors visually interact with defendants within the “contextual configuration” (Goodwin Reference Goodwin2000:1489) of the trial, which includes a variety of bodies and material aspects of the environment. In death penalty trials, this contextual configuration is institutionally mediated in order to manipulate ways in which jurors encounter defendants. These mediations have demonstrable effects on jurors' interpretations of defendants' behavior, intentions, and morality.

Body positioning within the built environment of the courtroom is designed to allow or disallow jurors certain kinds of sensorial access to defendants. Figure 1 depicts the arrangement of one courtroom in Texas, and is a fairly typical representation of the spatial arrangements of persons in courtrooms in general.

Figure 1.

Typical courtroom layout.

In front of the bar – the physical divider between the audience and the court professionals – two tables are placed next to each other. At one sits the prosecution team, usually two or three attorneys, and at the other are the two defense attorneys and the defendant, who is seated at the right hand of the defense table. The defendant usually wears a suit that either his family or his lawyers purchased or borrowed for him.Footnote ¹⁰ He is not cuffed or restrained in any visible way,Footnote ¹¹ a deliberate attempt by the court not to have the defendant's appearance sway the jurors. Because of this specific presentation of the defendant in court, many jurors told me that when they first came into the courtroom for jury selection, they thought the defendant was one of the attorneys. I made the same mistake once as well.

Implicated within this positioning of bodies is the opportunity for eye contact between the defendant and others in the courtroom. In this particular courtroom, the jurors processed directly in front of the defendant as they came and went, giving him unimpeded visual access to them. Courtroom procedure required that they enter and leave the courtroom after the defendant was already seated in his place. A number of jurors remarked on the defendant's ready ability to look at them and attempt eye contact as they entered and exited. Many of them actively avoided his gaze, some women going so far as to ask the judge to instruct the defendant not to “stare” at them because it made them uncomfortable. Such actions serve as distancing tactics, in that jurors explicitly avoid meeting the defendants' eyes, a behavior often argued to serve as the basis for empathic engagement (Enfield & Levinson Reference Enfield and Levinson2006; Ochs & Solomon Reference Ochs and Solomon2010; Dadds, Allen, Oliver, Faulkner, Legge, Moul, Woolgar, & Scott Reference Dadds, Allen, Oliver, Faulkner, Legge, Moul, Woolgar and Scott2012).

This may seem a minor point, but it was a major topic of discussion within my juror interviews. An element of the trial not caught on record and certainly not part of the “evidence,” the defendant's gaze is present and real in the jurors' trial experiences. In fact, during jury selection, attorneys, especially prosecutors, often require the potential jurors to look directly at the defendant and state whether they could sentence him to death. This tactic makes some potential jurors revise their previous statements that they could give the death penalty and disqualify themselves. Jurors' comments on defendants' eye contact or lack thereof suggest that they are constructing their own rules regarding the amount and appropriateness of eye gaze and its communication of one's morality and degree of remorse. Thus any manipulation of this access to the face or jurors' intentional attempts to avoid it serves as a device through which jurors can distance themselves from the defendant's human self (cf. Levinas Reference Levinas1969, Reference Levinas and Cohen1985).

Demonstrative references to defendants

Deixis is a primary linguistic resource through which our experiences of others are mediated. “Pure” deictic forms (Buhler Reference Buhler, Jarvella and Klein1934/1982) were first described by linguists as situating a given referent within a spatial universe that is related specifically to the context of talk (e.g. Lyons Reference Lyons1977; Fillmore Reference Fillmore, Jarvella and Klein1982; Hanks Reference Hanks1990). In this framework, deictic terms such as this or that, here or there, place a referent in a relationship of distance and are categorized according to whether they denote a proximal or distal positioning of the speaker to the object referred to (or something along a proximal-distal continuum)—that encoding more distance than its alternative, this.

Linguists have expanded the deictic notion of spatial proximity to include other dimensions, such as social and affective distance (Ostman Reference Ostman, Shibatani and Thompson1995). These deictic forms, referred to as “emotional” (Lakoff Reference Lakoff1974; Ostman Reference Ostman, Shibatani and Thompson1995) or “empathetic” (Lyons Reference Lyons1977) deixis, can display the level of empathy or involvement a speaker has with a referent (Duranti Reference Duranti1984; Ostman Reference Ostman, Shibatani and Thompson1995; Cornish Reference Cornish2001; Stivers Reference Stivers, Enfield and Stivers2007). Enfield similarly expands the discussion of deictic meaning, illuminating how demonstratives specifically encode meaning not just within physical space, but “interactional space” as well, which includes interlocutors' construals of space as “controlled, possessed, shared, separated” by one another (2003:88–89).

The following analysis examines one specific type of deictic phenomena: jurors' demonstrative references to defendants (such as this guy). In addition to, or perhaps in place of, encoding distance, deictic forms such as demonstratives have been described as solving the “coordination problem” in discourse (Schelling Reference Schelling1960; Lewis Reference Lewis1969; Clark, Schreuder, & Buttrick Reference Clark, Schreuder and Buttrick1983), that is, indicating to an interlocutor which of something is being referred to (Enfield Reference Enfield2003:86). Enfield describes a situation in Lao speech, in which the more specific demonstrative form nii is used when a referent is located within the interlocutors' “shared here-space.” In this case, he argues, use of the less-specific form (which he seems to map onto English distal forms) would be “semantically confusing” (2003:106). In his model, proximal forms do not necessarily express a “here” location, but that the referent is already salient in the interactional space of the interlocutors (2003:115).

The cases I examine seem to negate Enfield's logic. They include instances of anaphora, in which the defendant—as referent—has been established as a focus of the conversation, and yet a prototypically distal form (i.e. that —Enfield's “not here”) is used to refer to him. As such, they also defy explanation via Sacks & Schegloff's (Reference Sacks, Schegloff and Psathas1979) “recognitional vs. nonreferential” framework, which assumes that a demonstrative form will most likely be used when a speaker assumes that her recipient(s) do not know the referent. In all of my analytic instances, the defendant had already been referred to multiple times during the context of talk, usually with “he,” sometimes by his first or last name, and sometimes as “the defendant,” and was thus known by the recipients (either the trial audience or me, as interviewer). My analysis is thus more in line with explanations such as Stivers' (Reference Stivers, Enfield and Stivers2007:68), which posits that referring expressions are about much more than recognition. More specifically, since the default form of recognitional person reference in English is a name (Schegloff Reference Schegloff and Fox1996), something else about the context of talk and the positioning of the referent within it is achieved by violating this axiom.

I am left to ask what pragmatic action is being achieved through the use of these dispreferred demonstrative forms. For this I turn to analyses such as Duranti's (Reference Duranti1984) discussion of empathetic deixis, in which demonstratives are seen to display affective relationships among speakers and those they refer to. He argues that in Italian conversation, the demonstratives questo/a ‘this’ and quello/a ‘that,’ when used instead of personal pronouns, display lack of empathy or negative affect toward the person being referred to. Included in the “interactional space” constituted through deixis, therefore, is the moral world created through talk. Ochs & Capps (Reference Ochs and Capps1995) provide a compelling account of the encoding of this moral spatiality through language in their discussion of the deictic “here” as used in personal narratives about agoraphobia. They argue that the agoraphobic person's use of “here” in narratives of trauma creates an “emotional space,” bringing temporally and spatially remote events into the presence of her and her interlocutors (Ochs & Capps Reference Ochs and Capps1995:61–62). Deixis thus mediates our relationships with entities and persons of which we speak by positioning these beings within a “lived space,” which our “interests, cares, and attention define” (1995:63).

My data revealed that jurors most frequently referred to defendants with demonstrative noun phrases (e.g. that defendant) in contexts of dehumanization. These acts of dehumanization were often embedded within attempts to justify, for jurors especially, sentences of death. This implies that these particular forms of reference in these specific contexts provide sources for jurors to distance themselves from defendants in order to cast them out of their moral universe, aiding them in justifying their death sentences.

The following examples are drawn from interviews with capital jurors after they had completed their trials and sentenced defendants. In the first interview excerpt, a juror (whose jury committed their defendant to death) literally denies humanness to the defendant by characterizing him as having no heart. I had just asked her what made her first consider the death penalty a likely punishment during the trial.

1. (2) …cause the first thing he did he shot her in the stomach. And then we did the, that he was guilty, the- this guy doesn't have a heart. So, that's when I thought because he killed an in- an infant in somebody's (body).

It is clear that this is an example of a recognizable referent, as the defendant is first referred to in this spate of talk as “he.” This text thus illustrates an example of repair into a demonstrative form when referring to a defendant: the juror begins with a reference form starting with “the,” correcting herself and ultimately settling on the form “this guy.” This repair highlights the intensifying function of the demonstrative reference form (e.g. Hirschova Reference Hirschova1988), bringing particular focus to the defendant and to the action being accomplished through the reference (Stivers Reference Stivers, Enfield and Stivers2007): dissociating the juror from the defendant who she depicts as nonhuman. This may be a moral distancing, in that she does not want to associate herself with such a being. It may also be a cognitive distancing, in that she cannot comprehend a person committing such an act, and thus this guy marks cognitive distance between herself and the referent and his associated actions.

Using an unmarked reference form in this context, such as the personal pronoun “he,” would be consistent with a picture of the referent as unremarkable, fitting into normal social categories. But this defendant, having shot a pregnant woman in the stomach, arguably should not be included in those categories. The juror uses this dehumanizing expression to reflect on the moment she realized her desire to sentence him to death (“so that's when I thought”). Throughout my interviews, jurors used this kind of formulation when constituting defendants as nonhuman in the course of justifying their death sentences.

Text (3) illustrates even more explicitly the discursive construction of defendants as beings outside of normal categories of persons.

1. (3) a normal person wouldn't have done what he did, and you see this guy that is kind of non-emotional either direction, and you see him as kind of as not as a normal person. Not that he's crazy, but that it's just like, he could, he was totally separated from- from what you'd think normal emotions would be.

Again, the juror quoted above uses “this guy” to refer to the defendant in a recognitional discursive context, as he had just referred to the defendant as “he.” The distance created through the demonstrative reference form “this guy” parallels this juror's conceptualization of metaphoric distance: “he was totally separated from… normal emotions.” Here this juror relies on a defendant's lack of emotion to make a moral judgment about him, thus adhering to part of the judge's sentencing instructions. Despite the legal tendency to objectify defendants and disregard apparently subjective concerns such as feeling, this juror uses emotion to characterize the defendant as a type (“not as a normal person”).

Text (4) illustrates how employing several different deictic forms, in conjunction with other reference forms, can differentially position a referent throughout the same span of discourse. It is drawn from an interview with a juror who is unique, not in the sense that he voted for death, but because after the trial he became an activist of sorts, speaking in a variety of venues about the need for life without parole, an option his jury did not have. He also visited the defendant in prison after the trial's conclusion and has remained in contact with him, which is extremely rare. He thus has much greater personal familiarity with the defendant than most jurors do. This excerpt illustrates an interplay of relations of physical proximity with deicticly marked discursive relationships, and how these help construct the juror's depiction of the defendant.

1. (4) But when you're confronted with it, it's not like anything I could have ever imagined because you read newspaper accounts or you watch on TV and you think, well that person, you know, they just need to be, you know, eliminated. And let me tell you, from the graphic pictures we saw, this would fall [laughing] in that category. But, you know, then you realize there's a real human being. Did he stumble, fall, and even if he did, just the mere fact of loading a shotgun and putting somebody in that position I mean is that, that's pretty serious!… it was very interesting to meet Bobby, and he's a very gentle soul, and we, as Bobby says, we're two sides of the same coin. We were educated probably within a mile and a half of each other. And, you know, we knew the same streets and things like that. When you start talking about it it's like frightening [laughing] how close we all are. And this is as far as you think two people would be. But then you start to see the similarities. That's truly interesting.

In this example, the juror's deictic terms mirror his ruminations about proximity between people and the sense of similarity he derives from such geographical and social proximity. He reflects on these similarities in the course of humanizing the defendant, as his musing range from classes of people who commit heinous crimes to the defendant as an individual human being. His linguistic choices mark this transition, suggesting a connection among empathy (allowing oneself to take on the perspective of another), proximity, and humanization.

At first, the juror invokes a normalized view that anyone who commits murder should be “eliminated” and that such an act is not commensurate with “imaginable” categories of actions. With this typological classification, “that person,” the juror does not refer to a particular defendant, but describes an unidentified token of the type of person who would commit horrible crimes that demand the death penalty. In making such a potentially inflammatory statement, that someone be eliminated, this juror also distances himself from the telling by using the indefinite and generalized subject “you” rather than “I” (“you think…”). This linguistic distancing is accomplished in part through the demonstrative construction “that person,” which, in all discussions of demonstrative usage, indicates something or someone “not here” (Enfield Reference Enfield2003), placing the referent outside the (potentially moral) imaginative space of the speaker and interlocutor (cf. Stivers Reference Stivers, Enfield and Stivers2007).

There then follows a phenomenological shift, whereby the juror moves from generalizing about a type of criminal to formulating a humanizing description: “There's a real human being.” The anaphoric reference to “he” in the next sentence suggests that this description is evoking the defendant individually. The juror then alludes to the crime, as the defendant loads his shotgun and points it at “somebody.” While the defendant has been individualized, the victim and crime take on a generalized tone, beginning with “the mere fact of”—the juror seems not to be describing the defendant's individual crime per se, but again evoking the category of criminal persons and acts described previously.

The juror then positions the defendant as an actual person when referencing their face-to-face meeting. He refers to him with the recognitional form: his first name, Bobby.Footnote ¹² With this name, he invokes Bobby specifically, bringing him into the room, as it were, by reporting his words (“as Bobby says”). He then employs the inclusive pronoun “we” to describe their similar upbringings. Their geographic proximity as children allows the juror to recognize their commonalities and shared knowledge and facilitates empathic understanding with Bobby's situation. Despite the differences in the moral boundaries of this juror's and defendant's typical actions, prompting the juror to state that “this is as far as you think two people would be,” he finds closeness to the defendant based in their growing up within a mile and half of each other. He concludes with an unnerved generalization about humanity based in proximity, that it's “frightening… how close we all are.”

Constructions of agency

In the emotionally traumatic context of sentencing a person to death, jurors not only distance themselves from defendants, but from the act of sentencing as well. Because capital juries' verdicts for death must be unanimous, each juror must vote individually for a death sentence for a verdict to be rendered. Capital jurors thus place tremendous weight on their individual decisions. Their interview responses, however, suggest ways in which they manage distance between themselves and their sentencing decisions through constructions of grammatical agency. Marking agency in particular ways allows jurors to mitigate expressions of responsibility for another person's death. Though grammatical agency cannot be automatically mapped onto cultural ideologies of personal responsibility (Duranti Reference Duranti and Duranti2004), the examples below reveal the work that constructions of agency accomplish in conjunction with the message being conveyed through the content of the talk: that jurors are not ultimately responsible for defendants' sentences.

The statements of judges and attorneys as well as written legal language provide jurors with authoritative models for distancing themselves from their punishment decisions (cf. Erickson, Lind, Johnson, & O'Barr Reference Erickson, Lind, Johnson and O'Barr1978). Given the difficulty of capital jurors' task and the ambiguous and contradictory information they receive from a variety of sources, jurors constantly look to their written instructions and other legal language for verification of their actions and, in particular, for ways to deny “personal moral responsibility” for their decisions (Hoffman Reference Hoffman1995; Garvey Reference Garvey2000). The deletion of active grammatical agents, which is common to legal language, has been shown to increase misunderstanding of jury instructions (Charrow, Crandall, & Charrow Reference Charrow, Crandall, Charrow, Kittredge and Lehrberger1982). This confounding aspect of agency elision is thus doubly significant in Texas capital cases, in which jurors rely on this very language to make sense of their decisions.

The framing of the “special issues” in Texas capital trials allows and in fact encourages jurors to attenuate their own responsibility for life and death sentences. Based on postverdict interviews with capital jurors from multiple states, Haney, Sontag, & Costanzo (Reference Haney, Sontag and Costanzo1994:166) found that the special-issue framework, as opposed to the “weighing” system used in most states, does in fact allow jurors to distance themselves emotionally from the reality of their decisions. As outlined previously, Texas capital jurors do not vote directly for a life or death sentence. Rather, they are instructed to answer the two “special issue questions.” The jurors thus never pronounce an actual sentence on the defendant. The jury foreman merely signs his name on the instructions next to “yes” or “no” for each of the special issue questions. The jury then processes into the courtroom, after which the judge reads the verdict sheet aloud and pronounces a sentence on the defendant—either death by lethal injection or life without parole.

This sentencing structure leaves room for ambiguity as to jurors' actual involvement in administering a sentence. In text (5), one juror comments on this fact during his interview, unsure of who is ultimately responsible for the sentence he gave.

1. (5) Um, and make the recommendation whether we're the final authority or not I I think the judge can overrule sentence guide- a excuse me sentencing at some point but, I think the jury decides guilt or innocence, and then at least makes the recommendation for penalty.

This juror identifies his role in the guilt/innocence decision through an agentive construction typical to English: the jury (as agent and subject) decides the guilt or innocence of the defendant (as object of this act of deciding). After some consternation (marked through the hedges “I think” and “at least”), he concludes that jurors merely make a recommendation to the judge regarding sentencing, rather than being the “deciders.” In reality, however, the judge has no discretion in this regard. He or she merely presents the sentencing verdict to the defendant and has no power to overrule it.Footnote ¹³ The structure of the jury charge, however, makes this juror's interpretation possible, as it does not ask jurors to give the defendant a particular sentence. The judge connects the dots, so to speak, when pronouncing the sentence, stating the implications of the “special issue” answers after the verdict is read. It is also important to note that this juror refers to “the jury” as a whole as the responsible party for the decision, not himself as an individual. Jurors often refer to their collective responsibility for their decisions; however, as mentioned above, capital jurors (and the Supreme Court)Footnote ¹⁴ consider heavily their individual roles in the process, as all verdicts must be unanimous.

The language of jury instructions increases the ambiguity regarding responsibility for sentencing, as it potentially forges linguistic distance between jurors and the act of sentencing a defendant. The following texts, drawn from written jury instructions in one Texas case, suggest that jurors are not the ultimate agents in sentencing defendants. Who, then, is responsible for sentencing? Most legal language, jury instructions included, cites either the “Court” (the judge) or the circumstances of the crime itself as the primary agents in determining a defendants' sentence. Texts (6)–(8) are presented in the order they appear on the jury charge. These texts display that the grammatical formulation of agency in jury instructions reinforce Texas' structuring of the sentencing decision, in which jurors are not given ultimate responsibility.

1. (6) You have found the Defendant guilty of the offense of capital murder. As a result of that finding of guilt, and in order for the Court to assess a proper punishment, it is now necessary for you to determine… the answers to certain questions…

Text (6) is the first time in these instructions the punishment is specifically mentioned. The “Court” (judge), which serves as grammatical agent of the action (“assess[ing] a proper punishment”), is identified as the primary authority over a defendant's punishment. It is relevant to note that the judge—a person—is consistently referred to as the “Court”—a thing. This underscores the legal model that a death sentence is something that emerges from interpersonal institutional actions, rather than human decisions. Jurors' responsibility is then limited in this passage to determining “answers to certain questions.” The causal chain represented here is thus that jurors find guilt and answer questions, after which the judge determines a punishment. Only later will the potential death of the defendant occur, which is never referenced explicitly.

In text (7), in contrast, the “evidence” is positioned as agent of the sentencing decision, as it directs the jurors toward or against imposing the death penalty.

1. (7) Evidence of the background or character or the circumstances of the offense that militates for or mitigates against the imposition of the death penalty.

In this part of the instructions, the jurors' involvement in imposing death is attenuated in two ways. First, “the evidence” is constructed as the responsible agent that “militates for” or “mitigates against” death. Second, the actual act of sentencing, “the imposition,” is nominalized, which further eliminates a human agent from the action (Billig Reference Billig2008). This reading corresponds with findings that capital jurors rely disproportionately on the characteristics of the crime, rather than the defendant, when assessing punishment (Geimer & Amsterdam Reference Geimer and Amsterdam1989).

Finally, in text (8), the jurors are reminded again that it is the Court that actually imposes the sentence.

1. (8) You are instructed under the law applicable in this case, if the jury answers that a circumstance or circumstances warrant that a sentence of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole rather than a death sentence be imposed, the Court will sentence the defendant to imprisonment in the institutional division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for life without the possibility of parole.

This instruction begins as a second-person appeal to “you;” the switch to the third person “the jury” impersonalizes the reference to jurors' answers to the special issue questions, thus distancing the individual juror from her decision. The Court is then represented as the agent of sentencing the defendant (“the court will sentence the defendant”) and the jurors are again relegated to answering the special-issue questions (“the jury answers”). Their human agency is further attenuated in that “circumstances,” rather than their decisions, are said to warrant the imposition of a particular sentence.

After the jurors have deliberated, the judge pronounces a sentence to the defendant and all in the courtroom, during which he or she reiterates the formulations of agency from the jury charge. In text (9), a judge (reading from a document) addresses the courtroom.

1. (9) … a jury having answered in the affirmative special issue number one, also having answered in the affirmative special issue number two, and having answered in the negative as to special issue number three,Footnote ¹⁵I assess your punishment as death by lethal injection.

In this proclamation, jurors are again positioned as responsible for answering the special-issue questions, while the judge assesses the punishment. The ultimate authority for sentencing, it can be assumed, is thereby placed in the hands of the judge.

In addition to the language of the instructions, attorneys' language during jury selection socializes jurors into mitigating their role in sentencing defendants. Text (10) is drawn from a prosecutor's statements to jurors during jury selection. His summation of the decision-making process recapitulates the formulation of agency revealed in the jury instructions: the special issue framework exculpates jurors from ultimate responsibility for sentencing a defendant.

1. (10) You feel a little more comfortable after the judge explained these issues and the process you go through. It's not just a yes or no where you decide. What you're doing is you're basically answering the question.

This structure, he explains, makes the decision easier on jurors. They do not have to “decide,” but, rather, merely answer the question.

Not surprisingly, given these legal models, jurors' interview responses express mitigated forms of agency when discussing their decisions. They often cite, for example, a nonhuman, abstract agent as controlling the sentencing process. This corresponds with Haney and colleagues' (Reference Haney, Sontag and Costanzo1994:160) findings that capital jurors in multiple states tend to abdicate responsibility for their decisions to the “law,” the judge, or their instructions, ultimately evading the “life and death consequences” of their verdicts. In text (11), a juror explains to me how he justified sentencing a defendant to death.

1. (11) I determined going into this that I was going to do exactly what the state asked me to do. At the end of the day that would be the only way I would feel good about it… Whatever the state asks, I'm going to rigidly abide by it.

This juror emphatically bestows the responsibility for his sentencing decision on “the state,” a nonhuman, institutional representation of the criminal laws of Texas.

Many others jurors followed similar logic in talking about their decisions, citing other abstract entities, such as the law or a generalized “they,” as the responsible agents for the decision that is made. Identifying agents as nonanimate entities is a common practice in English; this grammatical option allows an event that probably involved human agency to be framed as if it did not (Duranti Reference Duranti and Duranti2004:464). In texts (12)–(14), drawn from three separate juror interviews, jurors locate responsibility for their decisions in nonhuman or abstract entities.

1. (12) But it's not a, deciding that isn't a judgment based on what I feel. It's based on what the charge says. It's based on the law.

2. (13) They don't want, you know they don't want someone who is not a continuing threat to be put to death.

3. (14) Make a good decision, not for yourself, not for, for what the state of Texas is asking you to do and they're not asking you to put him to death. They're asking you to be very careful about what you decide…

In text (12), the juror attributes his decision to what the “charge” and the “law” determine. He is willing to put aside his own feelings in order to honor this authority. In texts (13) and (14), the juror cites the generic “they,” understood perhaps as the state, or the lawyers, or some other manifestations of legal authority, as the source of authority for sentencing decisions. In text (14), the juror explicitly denies that sentencing decisions are under the purview of the individual juror, citing the state of Texas as the agent.

In contrast to these mitigating expressions, attorneys occasionally urge jurors to step out of this distancing framework and consider the decision they may make in a very individual, direct manner. In text (15), for example, a prosecutor questions a potential juror during jury selection.

1. (15) P: Take a look at Mr. Jackson [the defendant] over here. Can you see him?

   J: Yes.

   P: Okay. What I'd like to know is whether or not you could personally participate in a decision where these three questions are answered in such a way that he receive the death penalty? Could you do that?

   J: Yes.

   …

   J: No.

   P: You don't think you could participate in that process- personally participate in that process?

   J: No I don't.

In this prosecutor's shrewd line of questioning, he conflates a number of the tactics for manipulating proximity and distance I have discussed throughout this article. First, he asks the juror to look the defendant in the eye, collapsing the physical distance between the juror in the witness stand and the defendant seated at the defense table. In this request, he refers to the defendant by his name, rather than with a distancing reference form often used by prosecutors. Once the juror and defendant have engaged each other's faces, the attorney asks whether the juror could handle being “personally” responsible for a decision that would give this very person the death penalty. After first proposing that he could, this juror eventually denies his ability to do so thus disqualifying himself from the jury—the prosecutor's ultimate goal with this line of questioning.