NEW RESOURCES: University of Virginia Interactive Database Maps the Modern Death Penalty

The University of Virginia School of Law has cre­at­ed a new inter­ac­tive web resource (click on map) that allows researchers and the pub­lic to visu­al­ly explore death-sen­tenc­ing prac­tices in the United States from 1991 through 2017. The inter­ac­tive map pro­vides coun­ty-lev­el data on death sen­tences imposed across the United States, draw­ing from a new data­base cre­at­ed by University of Virginia Law Professor Brandon Garrett (pic­tured) for his recent book, End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death Penalty Can Revive Criminal Justice. The inter­ac­tive map, which is a web sup­ple­ment to the book, per­mits users to view where and how many death sen­tences were imposed in the U.S. each year, and to con­trast and com­pare sen­tenc­ing pat­terns over time in states, coun­ties, and the U.S. as a whole. Using a slid­er to view chrono­log­i­cal shifts in sen­tenc­ing pat­terns, the map illus­trates how death sen­tences have declined nation­wide and become increas­ing­ly iso­lat­ed to a few out­lier coun­ties. ​“This is the first resource to map out mod­ern death sen­tenc­ing in the United States,” Garrett said. ​“The map­ping vivid­ly shows how geo­graph­i­cal­ly iso­lat­ed death sen­tenc­ing has become.” The data forms the back­bone of End of Its Rope, in which Garrett ana­lyzes the dra­mat­ic decline in the use of the death penal­ty over the last 25 years. The pub­licly avail­able data­base con­tains infor­ma­tion on more than 5,000 death sen­tences, allow­ing researchers and lawyers to ana­lyze pat­terns and trends. ​“Several researchers, in addi­tion to those of us at UVA, have already made use of the data, and we hope that more do so in the future,” Garrett said. Garrett worked with a UVA Law librar­i­an, law stu­dents, and under­grad­u­ates to com­pile the data from gov­ern­ment records, court rul­ings, and other sources.

(Eric Williamson, Mapping the Modern Death Sentence, University of Virginia School of Law, March 27, 2018.) Explore the inter­ac­tive map here. See Books and Sentencing.