“The death penal­ty in the United States is at the end of its rope [and] its abo­li­tion will be a cat­a­lyst for reform­ing our crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.” So argues University of Virginia Law Professor Brandon L. Garrett in his wide­ly antic­i­pat­ed new book, End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice, which ana­lyzes the rea­sons behind the steep decline in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in over the last 25 years. With the help of oth­er researchers at the University of Virginia, Garrett ana­lyzed death-sen­tenc­ing data from 1990 to 2016, coun­ty by coun­ty. He found that numer­ous inter­re­lat­ed fac­tors con­tributed to the decline: the drop in mur­ders across the coun­try, the cre­ation of insti­tu­tion­al cap­i­tal defend­er offices that great­ly improved the qual­i­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, the avail­abil­i­ty of life with­out parole as a sen­tenc­ing option, the cost of the death penal­ty sys­tem, and grow­ing pub­lic aware­ness of exon­er­a­tions and the risk of wrong­ly sen­tenc­ing inno­cent defen­dants to death, fueled fur­ther by the abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in some states and the aban­don­ment of cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions by many coun­ties. Local cul­ture had a pro­found effect on death sen­tenc­ing prac­tices: Garrett found that states and coun­ties that most fre­quent­ly exe­cut­ed peo­ple devel­oped what he terms a ​“mus­cle mem­o­ry” for the prac­tice and ​“imposed far more death sen­tences just as a func­tion of hav­ing done so in the past.” But, the con­verse was also true: when a coun­ty stopped sen­tenc­ing peo­ple to death, it was less like­ly to resume the prac­tice. Garrett found that death sen­tences have now all but dis­ap­peared from rur­al America, and are now imposed main­ly in larg­er, urban areas. Garrett told the The Marshall Project, ​“we found a strong coun­ty-lev­el pat­tern of racial bias. Counties with more black res­i­dents have more death sen­tences. And coun­ties with more white vic­tims of mur­der have more death sen­tences. Call it a ​‘white lives mat­ter’ effect,” he said. In an inter­view with University of Virginia pub­li­cists, Garrett described the death penal­ty as ​“a failed exper­i­ment.” He said states’ recent efforts to reform death-penal­ty pro­ce­dures to ​“save the death penal­ty from itself” have failed because ​“the bias, both racial and geo­graph­ic, is too ingrained. Lawmakers have tried to speed up exe­cu­tions, but have instead seen more delays and botched exe­cu­tions. They have tried to insist on high­er-qual­i­ty proof, and have still seen exon­er­a­tions of inno­cent death row inmates.” Garrett hopes that as the death penal­ty wanes, the lessons learned can but­tress oth­er efforts to reform America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and to move away from ​“mass incar­cer­a­tion and harsh pun­ish­ment more broadly.”

(M. Chammah, ​“Q & A, What’s Behind the Decline in the Death Penalty?,” Marshall Project, October 3, 2017; E. Williamson, ​“In ​‘End of Its Rope,’ Garrett Follows Thread of Death Penalty’s Decline,” University of Virginia School of Law, News & Media, September 18, 2017.) See Books, Studies, Costs, Innocence, Life Without Parole, Murder Rates, Race, Representation, and Sentencing.

Brandon Garrett is a mem­ber of the Death Penalty Information Center Board of Directors, join­ing the Board in September 2016.

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