Counties with Large Death Rows Often Correlates With Prosecutorial Misconduct

Radley Balko, writ­ing in the Huffington Post, has exam­ined more close­ly some of the coun­ties iden­ti­fied in DPIC’s recent report, The 2% Death Penalty, as using the death penal­ty the most. Balko found that many of those high-use coun­ties have a pat­tern of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and oth­er prob­lems. For exam­ple, Philadelphia County has sent more inmates to death row than any oth­er coun­ty in Pennsylvania. However, a study of crim­i­nal cas­es over­turned in the state because of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct found over 60% of the cas­es came from Philadelphia. Duval County, Florida, has the largest per capi­ta death row in the nation, but recent­ly elect­ed a head pub­lic defend­er who ran on a plat­form of cut­ting fund­ing to pub­lic defense and billing indi­gent defen­dants who are acquit­ted. In the California coun­ties of Santa Clara and Riverside, courts had to review thou­sands of cas­es due to pros­e­cu­tors’ fail­ure to dis­close excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence, includ­ing fraud by a crime lab tech­ni­cian. In some instances, this mis­con­duct hid the actu­al inno­cence of the defen­dant, such as that of Ray Krone in Maricopa County, Arizona, who was sen­tenced to death after pros­e­cu­tors with­held crucial evidence.

(R. Balko, ​“Counties That Send The Most People To Death Row Show A Questionable Commitment to Justice,” Huffington Post, November 25, 2013). See Prosecutorial Misconduct, Arbitrariness and Innocence. See DPIC’s Report, The 2% Death Penalty.