Life Verdict or Hung Jury? How States Treat Non-Unanimous Jury Votes in Capital-Sentencing Proceedings

As of January 17, 2018

In 2016, the Supreme Courts of Florida and Delaware declared their death-penal­ty statutes to be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al because they per­mit­ted tri­al judges to impose the death penal­ty based upon a sen­tenc­ing jury’s non-unan­i­mous rec­om­men­da­tion for death. Those deci­sions left Alabama as the only state that per­mit­ted tri­al judges to impose a death sen­tences based upon a jury’s non-unan­i­mous sentencing recommendation.

But Alabama is not the only state that per­mits judges to decide what sen­tence to impose if a cap­i­tal-sen­tenc­ing jury can­not reach a unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing ver­dict. Missouri and Indiana con­sid­er the lack of una­nim­i­ty to con­sti­tute a ​“hung jury” and then man­date that the court inde­pen­dent­ly decide what sen­tence to impose if a cap­i­tal-sen­tenc­ing jury can­not reach a unan­i­mous sentencing verdict. 

No Missouri jury has imposed a death sen­tence since 2013, but Missouri state tri­al judges imposed death sen­tences in two cas­es in a four-month peri­od between late 2017 and ear­ly 2018 under this hung-jury pro­vi­sion. In October 2017, a St. Charles County tri­al judge sen­tenced Marvin Rice to death after his jury dead­locked 11 – 1 in favor of a life sen­tence. In January 2018, a Greene County tri­al judge sen­tenced Craig Wood to death after his jury dead­locked 10 – 2 in favor of death.

DPIC has reviewed the death-penal­ty statutes of the 31 states that per­mit cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and the fed­er­al death penal­ty statute to deter­mine how each juris­dic­tion pro­ceeds when a cap­i­tal-sen­tenc­ing jury does not reach a unan­i­mous ver­dict in the penal­ty phase of a cap­i­tal tri­al. This is what we found:

The laws of more than 70% of juris­dic­tions that per­mit cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment (22 states, plus the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment) man­date an auto­mat­ic life sen­tence if a jury can­not reach a unan­i­mous sen­tenc­ing ver­dict. Five states allow the state anoth­er oppor­tu­ni­ty to seek death with a new sen­tenc­ing hear­ing before anoth­er jury. Two oth­er states — Indiana and Missouri — remove the sen­tenc­ing deci­sion from the jury fol­low­ing a dead­lock and trans­fer the deci­sion-mak­ing author­i­ty to the judge. Another two states — Montana and Nebraska — reserve the sen­tenc­ing pow­er to the judge in all death-penalty cases.

Here is a state-by-state break­down of the applicable law:

* State has since abol­ished the death penalty.