In a com­pre­hen­sive study cov­er­ing 20 years and thou­sands of cap­i­tal cas­es in Ohio, the Associated Press found that the death penal­ty has been applied in an uneven and often arbi­trary fash­ion. Among the con­clu­sions of the study that ana­lyzed 1,936 indict­ments report­ed to the Ohio Supreme Court by coun­ties with cap­i­tal cas­es from October 1981 through 2002 were:

  • Offenders fac­ing a death penal­ty charge for killing a white per­son were twice as like­ly to go to death row than if they had killed a black vic­tim. Death sen­tences were hand­ed down in 18% of cas­es where the vic­tims were white, com­pared with 8.5% of cas­es where vic­tims were black.
  • Nearly 1/​2 of the 1,936 cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment cas­es end­ed with a plea bar­gain. That includes 131 cas­es in which the crime involved two or more vic­tims; 25 peo­ple had killed at least 3 victims.
  • In Cuyahoga County, a Democratic strong­hold, just 8% of offend­ers charged with a cap­i­tal crime received a death sen­tence. In con­ser­v­a­tive Hamilton County, 43% of cap­i­tal offend­ers end­ed up on death row.

State Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfeifer, who co-spon­sored the death penal­ty law in 1981 when he was a mem­ber of Ohio’s Legislature, said the find­ings are dis­turb­ing and con­firmed his fears that race would be a con­tribut­ing fac­tor: ​“That has to be very dis­con­cert­ing and alarm­ing to all of us,” he said. 

(Associated Press, May 5, 2005). See Race and Studies.

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