Death Penalty Disproportionately Imposed by, Increasingly Isolated to, Small Number of Counties

(Click image to enlarge) The Atlantic reports that death sentences are heavily concentrated in a small number of heavy-use counties. According to DePaul University law professor Robert J. Smith, “1 percent of counties accounts for roughly 44 percent of all death sentences” since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. Death-sentencing rates in those counties are not a product of their population or murder rates, Smith points out. For example, from 2004 to 2009, “Miami-Dade County (Florida), which has a population of approximately 2.5 million, only sentenced four people to death, whereas Oklahoma County, which has a population of approximately 750,000, sentenced eighteen people to death.” DPIC’s 2013 report, “The 2% Death Penalty,” found that, “Houston had 8 percent more murders than Dallas, but 324 percent more death row inmates; 15 percent more murders than San Antonio, but 430 percent more death row inmates.” The county disparities come from prosecutorial discretion, which allows local prosecutors to determine when to seek the death penalty. In some counties, Washington Post reporter Radley Balko reported, “a toxic culture of death and invincibility” values convictions and death sentences above all else. In 2007, Orleans Parish (Louisiana) Assistant District Attorney James Williams said, “There was no thrill for me unless there was a chance for the death penalty.”

(M. Ford, “The Death Penalty Becomes Rare,” The Atlantic, April 21, 2015.) See Arbitrariness.