A recent study of Colorado​’s death penal­ty con­clud­ed that the pun­ish­ment is applied so rarely and with­out clear statu­to­ry stan­dards as to ren­der it con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly unfair. Professors Justin Marceau (left) and Sam Kamin (cen­ter) from the University of Denver College of Law, and Professor Wanda Foglia (right) of Rowan University exam­ined mur­der con­vic­tions in the state from 1999 to 2010. The authors dis­cov­ered that, while the death penal­ty was an option in approx­i­mate­ly 92% of first degree mur­ders, it was sought by pros­e­cu­tors in only 3% of the cas­es, pur­sued through sen­tenc­ing in only 1% of the cas­es, and imposed in just 0.6% of the cas­es. The researchers con­clud­ed, ​“A con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sound cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing sys­tem must lim­it the dis­cre­tion of pros­e­cu­tors and jurors such that the deter­mi­na­tion of life and death is not one of caprice or arbi­trari­ness …. Colorado’s cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing sys­tem fails to gen­uine­ly nar­row the class of death eli­gi­ble offend­ers so as to min­i­mize the risk of arbi­trari­ness. [T]here is no mean­ing­ful way to dis­tin­guish between the many who are eli­gi­ble for the penal­ty and the very few who receive it.”

(J. Marceau, S. Kamin, and W. Foglia, ​“Colorado Capital Punishment: An Empirical Study,” University of Denver Sturm College of Law, Working paper, No. 13 – 08 (2013)). See Arbitrariness. Read more Studies about the death penalty.

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