concepts
A two-stage trial, required in all capital cases, where the first stage determines a defendant's guilt or innocence and the second part decides whether the defendant should be sentenced to death. The bifurcated trial was developed as a remedy to what the U.S. Supreme Court found to be the arbitrary imposition of the death penalty in Furman v. Georgia (1972). [Source: The SAGE Glossary of the Social and Behavioral Sciences; Bifurcated Trial]
bifurcated trial
trials