New DPIC Podcast: The Death Penalty Census

Data from fifty years of the mod­ern U.S. death penal­ty reveal ​“a sys­tem that is rife with error, filled with dis­crim­i­na­tion, [and] very, very dif­fi­cult to fair­ly admin­is­ter,” Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham says in the July episode the Discussions with DPIC pod­cast. The episode, a dis­cus­sion between Dunham and 2021 – 2022 DPIC Data Fellow Aimee Breaux about the launch of DPIC’s ground­break­ing Death Penalty Census data­base, was released July 20, 2022.

The Death Penalty Census data­base con­tains infor­ma­tion on 9,737 death sen­tences imposed in U.S. state, fed­er­al, and mil­i­tary courts from the time the Supreme Court struck down all exist­ing U.S. death penal­ty laws in its land­mark June 29, 1972 rul­ing in Furman v. Georgia through January 1, 2021. Launched in con­junc­tion with Furman​’s fifti­eth anniver­sary, the cen­sus con­tains the name, race, and gen­der of each per­son sen­tenced to death, the year of each death sen­tence or cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing, the state or fed­er­al juris­dic­tion and coun­ty, fed­er­al dis­trict, or mil­i­tary branch in which charges were brought, the out­come of each sen­tence, and the final out­come or cur­rent sta­tus of each case. To DPIC’s knowl­edge, it is the most com­pre­hen­sive com­pi­la­tion of infor­ma­tion on indi­vid­ual death sen­tences ever assembled. 

What DPIC found, Dunham said, is that ​“the death penal­ty is arbi­trary based on place and time. It depends more on what side of the coun­ty line a mur­der was said to have occurred and what year you were tried,” he said. When it comes to race, he said, the data show a race of vic­tim pref­er­ence in which cas­es move into the sys­tem, after which defen­dants ​“are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly like­ly to be sen­tenced to death if [they] are a defen­dant of col­or … and this is par­tic­u­lar­ly the case when you’re look­ing at vul­ner­a­ble pop­u­la­tions” such as juve­nile offend­ers and defen­dants who are inno­cent or intellectually disabled. 

“The main mis­sion that DPIC has had is to make sure that deci­sions about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment are based on facts, not based on myth or pro­pa­gan­da,” Dunham said, explain­ing the rea­sons for under­tak­ing the project. ​“As we were look­ing at the data about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment, we real­ized that there were huge holes that pre­vent­ed us from doing some pret­ty sig­nif­i­cant analy­ses — we did­n’t know how many death sen­tences had been imposed. And if you don’t know that you can’t tell how reli­ably the death penal­ty is being carried out.”

The Death Penalty Census data­base took near­ly five years to com­pile and pro­ceed­ed in three stages, Breaux explained. First, DPIC staff merged data from its exist­ing death-row, exon­er­a­tion, exe­cu­tion, and exon­er­a­tion data­bas­es with nation­al data­bas­es cre­at­ed by respect­ed death-penal­ty researchers. Then, DPIC staff found anoth­er 40% of sen­tences through state and local data col­lect­ed or main­tained by depart­ments of cor­rec­tions, defense orga­ni­za­tions, advo­ca­cy groups, courts records, media archives, and indi­vid­ual case research. Finally, staff sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly reviewed the data for accu­ra­cy, check­ing at least 10% of sen­tences in each state. Still, Dunham said, with a dataset this size there will inevitably be errors and omis­sions. Dunham urged any­one with addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion or who iden­ti­fies any cor­rec­tions to the cen­sus to reach out via email to DeathPenaltyCensus@​deathpenaltyinfo.​org.

An ini­tial review of the data showed that few­er than one out of every six death sen­tences has result­ed in an exe­cu­tion. More often, death sen­tences were reversed. The most com­mon out­come of a death sen­tence was that the sen­tence or con­vic­tion was over­turned in the courts and the defen­dant was re-sen­tenced to life or less. To Dunham, this sta­tis­tic casts doubt on the death penal­ty as a whole. 

“I think that goes to the over­all ques­tion about whether we can trust the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty — whether we can have con­fi­dence that this is a pub­lic pol­i­cy that can be admin­is­tered in a way that’s accu­rate, in a way that’s fair, in a way that’s con­sis­tent,” Dunham said. ​“The fact is that there have been near­ly 10,000 death sen­tences. And if we think about this, in terms of trans­porta­tion — if you think of each death sen­tence as a trip on a train — you real­ize the most like­ly out­come is not that you end up at the sta­tion that is designed to go to, but that years pass and after those years pass, you end up exact­ly where you start­ed. And in most of those cas­es, you won’t even get back on the train. That’s not how a sys­tem should work.”

The Death Penalty Census also pro­vides evi­dence of the geo­graph­ic arbi­trari­ness to the U.S. cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. DPIC’s 2013 report, The 2% Death Penalty showed that just 2% of U.S. coun­ties were respon­si­ble for a major­i­ty of exe­cu­tions and a major­i­ty of peo­ple on death row. The Death Penalty Census showed a pun­ish­ment that was becom­ing even more geo­graph­i­cal­ly iso­lat­ed. ​“If you look at death row today, just 34 coun­ties out of the 3400 coun­ties in the United States — few­er than 1.1% of all the coun­ties in the United States — account for half of every­body who is cur­rent­ly on death row,” Dunham said. ​“2% of the coun­ties account for more than 60% of every­body who is on state death rows. And 82.8% — near­ly 83% of U.S. coun­ties — don’t have any­body on death row at all.” Just five coun­ties account for more than 20% of all U.S. exe­cu­tions over the past 50 years, he said. 

“We found that arbi­trari­ness is also reflect­ed in death sen­tences, not just in who’s on death row and exe­cu­tions,” Breaux not­ed. ​“Just 76 coun­ties and the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment account for half of all death sen­tences. So, for con­text, that’s about 2.4% of coun­ties and the federal government.”

Breaux urged lis­ten­ers to explore the Death Penalty Census data­base on their own. ​“We see the death penal­ty cen­sus as a resource for the pub­lic, for the media, for aca­d­e­mics, advo­cates, gov­ern­ment offi­cials — for any­one work­ing in the death penal­ty field,” she said. ​“It’s a nation­al data­base, but it gets pret­ty local. You can use it to under­stand who has been sen­tenced to death in your area, what out­comes, what hap­pened with those sen­tences. We hope it is a tool that empow­ers peo­ple to uncov­er more about the death penalty.”