In its recent study of Ohio’s death penal­ty, the Associated Press found that of the 1,936 cap­i­tal indict­ments filed statewide from 1981 – 2002, about 50% end­ed in plea bar­gains. Of those cas­es, 131 peo­ple who plead­ed guilty in exchange for escap­ing the death penal­ty were charged with killing mul­ti­ple vic­tims. By con­trast, 196 of the 274 peo­ple who were sen­tenced to death row dur­ing the same 21-year time span were con­vict­ed of killing a sin­gle vic­tim. The AP’s Ohio find­ings were sim­i­lar to fig­ures from oth­er states and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. In New York, plea bar­gains were offered in 26 of the 54 cas­es between 1995 and 2003, and in California between 1977 and 1989, near­ly 47% of the 2,866 cap­i­tal cas­es were resolved with­out a tri­al, almost all because of plea bar­gains. At the fed­er­al lev­el, 33% of death penal­ty cas­es have end­ed in plea bar­gains since 1998. 

(Associated Press, June 4, 2005). See Arbitrariness. See also the full Ohio AP Study series:

Andrew Welsh-Huggins, ​“Death Penalty Unequal,” Associated Press, May 7, 2005.
Kate Roberts, ​“Capital Cases Hard for Smaller Counties,” Associated Press, May 8, 2005
John Seewer, ​“Two Killers; One Spared,” Associated Press, May 9, 2005.

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