New Study Finds Significant Race-of-Victim Disparities in St. Louis County Death Sentencing

A study of more than 400 death-eli­gi­ble mur­der cas­es in St. Louis County, Missouri over a 27-year peri­od has found sig­nif­i­cant racial dis­par­i­ties in the county’s admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty based upon the race of the victim.

An expert report by University of North Carolina polit­i­cal sci­en­tist Frank R. Baumgartner released on September 20, 2022 found that the like­li­hood that a death sen­tence would be imposed in St. Louis County was 3.5 times greater if the vic­tim was white, as com­pared to cas­es in which the vic­tim was Black. The race-of-vic­tim effects ​“persist[ed] after the intro­duc­tion of con­trols for aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors,” Baumgartner wrote, ​“mean­ing that these dis­par­i­ties can­not be explained by legit­i­mate case characteristics.”

Baumgartner’s study was pre­pared in con­nec­tion with defense efforts to obtain clemen­cy for death-row pris­on­er Kevin Johnson, a teen offend­er sen­tenced to death for killing a white police offi­cer. It cov­ered the years 1991 – 2018, track­ing the peri­od in which for­mer St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch was in office. Voters oust­ed McCullough in 2018 after he failed to indict a white police offi­cer for the mur­der of unarmed black teenag­er Michael Brown, which incit­ed the Ferguson protests. 

Baumgartner found sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence that white lives mat­tered more to coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors than Black lives dur­ing McCullough’s tenure, with the great­est race-of-vic­tim dis­par­i­ties in the treat­ment of cas­es occur­ring at the stages of the case in which pros­e­cu­tors had the great­est dis­cre­tion. While more than twice as many of the 408 death-eli­gi­ble cas­es that came before coun­ty pros­e­cu­tors dur­ing the study peri­od involved Black vic­tims (68.4% to 31.6%), near­ly two-thirds of the 29 cas­es that result­ed in death sen­tences in the coun­ty involved vic­tims who were white (62.1% to 37.9%). (Click to enlarge graph­ic.) On aver­age, 7.1% of death-eli­gi­ble cas­es result­ed in death sen­tences. However, death was imposed in 14.1% of white-vic­tim cas­es, as com­pared to 4.0% of cas­es in which the vic­tim was Black.

The ​“most dra­mat­ic reduc­tions” in the per­cent­ages of cas­es involv­ing Black vic­tims, Baumgartner wrote, occurred at stages in the exclu­sive con­trol of law enforce­ment — charg­ing the case as a first-degree mur­er and issu­ing a death-notice — where ​“white-vic­tim cas­es [were] dif­fer­en­tial­ly select­ed for cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion.” The per­cent­age of cas­es involv­ing Black vic­tims dropped from 68.4% to 62.0% in charg­ing deci­sions, then fell an addi­tion­al 15.7 per­cent­age points to 46.3% among the death-noticed cas­es. White-vic­tim cas­es rose from less than one-third (31.6%) to more than a half (53.7%) dur­ing those stages. The rep­re­sen­ta­tion of white-vic­tim cas­es rose by anoth­er 8 per­cent­age points, to 62.1%, in jury sentencing decisions.

Baumgartner’s study also found that the sta­tis­ti­cal over­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of death sen­tences in white-vic­tim cas­es was unre­lat­ed to legit­i­mate case char­ac­ter­is­tics: the race of victim mattered. 

Three per­cent of cas­es involv­ing a sin­gle Black vic­tim result­ed in a death, where­as death sen­tences were imposed in 14% of cas­es with a sin­gle vic­tim white vic­tim. Using a mul­ti­vari­ate regres­sion analy­sis that con­sid­ered the impact of aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances, he found that the pres­ence of a white vic­tim more than tripled the odds that a death sen­tence was imposed. Having a white vic­tim had the same aggra­vat­ing weight as a defen­dant hav­ing com­mit­ted a pri­or homi­cide or violent assault.

A July 2015 study by Baumgartner found that St. Louis County’s death-penal­ty prac­tices also con­tributed sig­nif­i­cant­ly to stark racial and geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties in the appli­ca­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment across Missouri. That study found that a per­son con­vict­ed of homi­cide in St. Louis County is three times more like­ly to be exe­cut­ed than if he or she were con­vict­ed else­where in the state and 13 times more like­ly to be exe­cut­ed than a per­son con­vict­ed in neigh­bor­ing St. Louis City. Courts also have repeat­ed­ly found that the county’s pros­e­cu­tors dis­crim­i­na­to­ri­ly struck African Americans from jury ser­vice because of their race.

As part of his reform agen­da, McCullough suc­ces­sor, Wesley Bell, cre­at­ed a Conviction and Incident Review Unit. While that unit was in the process of engag­ing a spe­cial pros­e­cu­tor to inves­ti­gate Johnson’s claim that his death sen­tence was a prod­uct of racial bias, the Missouri Attorney General’s office filed a motion in the Missouri Supreme Court seek­ing a death war­rant for Johnson. On August 24, 2022, the court grant­ed that motion, set­ting Johnson’s exe­cu­tion for November 29, 2022. 

At a press con­fer­ence the next day, Rebecca Woodman, one of Johnson’s lawyers, called for a halt to the exe­cu­tion, say­ing “[i]t would be uncon­scionable for Kevin to be exe­cut­ed with­out a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion into the claims that are pending.”