In cas­es with mul­ti­ple defen­dants, the ​“worst” offend­er does not always receive the worst pun­ish­ment. For exam­ple, in Arizona, Patrick Bearup (pic­tured) was the only one among four co-defen­dants to receive the death penal­ty, even though he was not direct­ly involved in killing the vic­tim. The oth­er three defen­dants, one of whom insti­gat­ed the offense, anoth­er of whom beat the vic­tim with a base­ball bat, and a third who shot the vic­tim, were able to secure plea bar­gains, avoid­ing tri­al. Two of them are like­ly to be released with­in 15 years. According to Dale Baich of the fed­er­al pub­lic defend­er’s office in Arizona, of the six inmates exe­cut­ed there in 2012, four were equal­ly or less cul­pa­ble than their co-defen­dants, and 3 of those 4 co-defen­dants have already been released. A judge who revei­wed Bearup’s case, crit­i­cized the pros­e­cu­tor for pur­su­ing the death penal­ty against a man who ​“even under the state’s the­o­ry, did not cause the phys­i­cal death” of the vic­tim. The judge nev­er­the­less upheld the death sen­tence. In anoth­er Arizona coun­ty, the pros­e­cu­tor announced the coun­ty could only afford one death penal­ty case at a time, there­by end­ing a cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion in an egre­gious mur­der, while pur­su­ing it in a com­pa­ra­ble case. Christopher Dupont, a lawyer in Arizona said, ​“Do peo­ple who com­mit equal­ly heinous crimes get the same results? The answer is unques­tion­ably no. It’s a total mys­tery who is going to face the death penal­ty and who is not.”

(F. Santos, ​“Less Culpable, but With Longer Sentences,” New York Times, April 5, 2013). See Arbitrariness.

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