According to a recent study by Prof. David Sloss of the St. Louis University School of Law, and oth­ers, only a small per­cent­age of eli­gi­ble mur­der cas­es in Missouri are pros­e­cut­ed as death penal­ty cas­es, and even few­er result in a death sen­tence. Only 2.5 per­cent of defen­dants pros­e­cut­ed for inten­tion­al homi­cide are sen­tenced to death. In anoth­er 2.5 per­cent of cas­es, juries reject the death penal­ty. Ninety-five per­cent of inten­tion­al homi­cide cas­es are nev­er pre­sent­ed to the jury as cap­i­tal cas­es. But rather than depend­ing on which are the worst crimes, the chance of a death sen­tence appears to rest more on what part of the state the crime was com­mit­ted in.

According to Prof. Sloss:

Prosecutors in St. Louis County pur­sued cap­i­tal tri­als in more than 7 per­cent of their inten­tion­al homi­cide cas­es. In con­trast, pros­e­cu­tors in Jackson County (Kansas City) pur­sued cap­i­tal tri­als in few­er than one-half of 1 per­cent of their cas­es. These dis­par­i­ties raise the dis­turb­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty that deci­sions about who lives and who dies may be guid­ed more by the philo­soph­i­cal predilec­tions of indi­vid­ual pros­e­cu­tors than the cul­pa­bil­i­ty of individual defendants.

To lessen the effect of geog­ra­phy and the lean­ings of indi­vid­ual pros­e­cu­tors, the authors of the study rec­om­mend a nar­row­ing of the class of cas­es eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty.
(David Sloss, ​“Death penal­ty: In Missouri, where you live may mat­ter,” St. Louis Beacon, May 1, 2008). See Arbitrariness and Studies.

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