On Anniversary of Furman v. Georgia, DPIC Census of U.S. Death Sentences Details 50 Years of Arbitrariness, Bias, and Error

On the 50^th anniver­sary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 29, 1972 deci­sion in Furman v. Georgia that struck down all exist­ing death penal­ty laws, the Death Penalty Information Center released its Death Penalty Census. 

The cen­sus is the most com­pre­hen­sive data­base of death sen­tences ever assem­bled, con­tain­ing more than 9,700 death sen­tences (click to enlarge image). In the cen­sus, DPIC has attempt­ed to iden­ti­fy every death sen­tence hand­ed down in the U.S. from the day Furman was decid­ed through January 1, 2021 and track the sta­tus of each sentence. 

The data pro­vide pow­er­ful evi­dence that the nation’s use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment con­tin­ues to be arbi­trary, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry, and rife with error.

“After 50 years, the data show a waste­ful pun­ish­ment, incom­pe­tent­ly applied and beset by arbi­trary fac­tors such as race, place, and time,” said Robert Dunham, DPIC’s Executive Director. ​“The most like­ly out­come of a death sen­tence once it is imposed is that it will be over­turned. Fewer than 1.1% of coun­ties account for half of death row. Thirty-year-old cas­es are com­ing up for exe­cu­tion that wouldn’t even be cap­i­tal­ly pros­e­cut­ed today. And when you look behind the data, the fea­tures that best char­ac­ter­ize exe­cu­tions — race of vic­tim, vul­ner­a­ble defen­dants, what side of the coun­ty line the crime occurred and when it was tried, and the lack of mean­ing­ful judi­cial process — are all ille­git­i­mate bases to admin­is­ter the law. The Court said America wasn’t able to admin­is­ter the death penal­ty fair­ly or reli­ably a half cen­tu­ry ago. The data show we still can’t do it today.”

The data­base con­tains the name, race, and gen­der of each defen­dant sen­tenced to death; the state and coun­ty (or fed­er­al dis­trict or mil­i­tary branch) of pros­e­cu­tion; the year of sen­tenc­ing; the out­come of the par­tic­u­lar sen­tence; and the final out­come or cur­rent sta­tus of the case.

DPIC’s analy­sis of the new­ly released data finds that five of six death sen­tences have not result­ed in an exe­cu­tion. The sin­gle most like­ly out­come of a cap­i­tal case once a death sen­tence is imposed is that the con­vic­tion or death sen­tence will be over­turned and the defen­dant will not be resen­tenced to death. A death sen­tence is 3 times more like­ly to be reversed as a result of a court deci­sion than it is to result in an execution.

The data also reflect con­tin­u­ing racial bias in the admin­is­tra­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment across the United States. ​“When it comes to exe­cu­tions,” Dunham said, ​“the data show that white lives mat­ter more than Black lives.” Executions car­ried out over the 50 years were six times more like­ly to involve a white vic­tim than only to involve vic­tims who were Black. Defendants of col­or were dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly like­ly to be wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of cap­i­tal offens­es, took longer to be exon­er­at­ed, and com­prised an over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of the like­ly intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled peo­ple who con­tin­ue to be exe­cut­ed in the U.S. despite the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion against that practice. 

60% of Black defen­dants who have been exe­cut­ed were sen­tenced to death for killing white vic­tims. Just 34.4% of exe­cu­tions of African Americans were for killing Black vic­tims. By con­trast, 94.4% of exe­cu­tions of white pris­on­ers were in cas­es involv­ing white vic­tims. Just 2.4% of exe­cu­tions of white pris­on­ers were for killing Black vic­tims and 2.3% were for killing Latinx victims.

The find­ings of the cen­sus even more strong­ly illus­trate the geo­graph­ic arbi­trari­ness of the death penal­ty, first described in DPIC’s 2013 report, The 2% Death Penalty. Since the time of that report, the death penal­ty has grown even more geo­graph­i­cal­ly con­cen­trat­ed, with 34 coun­ties — 1.1% of all U.S. coun­ties — account­ing for more than half of every­one on death row. Just 75 coun­ties (2.4%) account for half of all death sen­tences imposed in the last 50 years. Just five coun­ties — Harris (Houston), Dallas, Tarrant (Fort Worth), and Bexar (San Antonio) coun­ties in Texas and Oklahoma County (Oklahoma City) — account for more than 20% of all the exe­cu­tions in the U.S. in the past half-century.

The data also doc­u­ment that most U.S. coun­ties don’t prac­tice cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Nearly 60% of U.S. coun­ties have nev­er imposed a death sen­tence. 83% of U.S. coun­ties did not have any­one on death row. 84% of coun­ties have not had any exe­cu­tions since Furman.

The cen­sus is avail­able in an inter­ac­tive, search­able data­base on DPIC’s web­site, and can be down­loaded as a CSV file. Data from the cen­sus has also been incor­po­rat­ed into visu­al­iza­tions through­out the DPIC web­site. DPIC is con­tin­u­ing to review the data and will be adding new web­pages over the com­ing months ana­lyz­ing U.S. death penal­ty prac­tices and trends over the past fifty years.