Bucks County, Pennsylvania pros­e­cu­tors have agreed not to seek the death penal­ty for defen­dant Cosmo DiNardo (pic­tured), in exchange for his con­fes­sion to a quadru­ple mur­der, infor­ma­tion impli­cat­ing an accom­plice, and infor­ma­tion per­mit­ting author­i­ties to recov­er the body of one of the vic­tims. The deal was made quick­ly — just one week after the begin­ning of the inves­ti­ga­tion into the dis­ap­pear­ance of the four young men and the dis­cov­ery of three of the bod­ies — to end the uncer­tain­ty faced by the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies. Pennsylvania defense attor­ney Marc Bookman said, ​“The defense is giv­ing the pros­e­cu­tor some­thing com­pelling. He said he would direct them to where the bod­ies are. You’ve got four griev­ing fam­i­lies who des­per­ate­ly want clo­sure, how­ev­er sad that clo­sure might be. And he’s ask­ing for some­thing in exchange.” All of the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies sup­port­ed the deal, accord­ing to Mark Potash, whose son, Mark Sturgis, was killed. ​“Without the con­fes­sion, we would have wound up leav­ing a boy miss­ing. It took about half a sec­ond for all of us to agree,” he said. Former Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham — who a 2016 report by Harvard’s Fair Punishment Project described as one of America’s ​“dead­liest pros­e­cu­tors”—said that avoid­ing a death penal­ty tri­al and appeals would save, ​“hun­dreds of thou­sands, if not mil­lions” of dol­lars. The deal, which won praise from both defense lawyers and pros­e­cu­tors, high­lights an on-going con­cern about sys­temic arbi­trari­ness in the way the death penal­ty is admin­is­tered: high­ly cul­pa­ble mur­der­ers who have infor­ma­tion lead­ing to the dis­cov­ery of addi­tion­al vic­tims or solv­ing oth­er mur­ders may be able to avoid a death sen­tence, in spite of the seri­ous­ness of the crime, while less cul­pa­ble defen­dants are sen­tenced to death for less seri­ous mur­ders. Earlier this year, Todd Kohlhepp avoid­ed a death sen­tence by plead­ing guilty to sev­en mur­ders in South Carolina, pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion that helped solve four cas­es. ​“Green River” killer Gary Ridgway made a sim­i­lar deal in Washington in 2003, plead­ing guilty to 48 mur­ders and help­ing inves­ti­ga­tors find the remains of numer­ous missing victims.

(N. Phillips and C. McCoy, ​“Legal experts praise Bucks deal that led to mur­der con­fes­sion,” The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 14, 2017; T. Gabriel and A. Blinder, ​“After Grisly Killings in Pennsylvania, a Quick Deal to Spare Execution,” The New York Times, July 17, 2017.) See Arbitrariness.

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