The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recent­ly com­plet­ed a com­pre­hen­sive study of Georgia’s use of the death penal­ty and found that ​“get­ting the death penal­ty in Georgia is as pre­dictable as a light­ning strike.” This was the same prob­lem that the U.S. Supreme Court iden­ti­fied in 1972 when it over­turned Georgia’s law and the laws of every oth­er death penal­ty state.

Among the paper’s find­ings, which appear in a four-part series that began on Sept. 23, 2007, were:

• Of Georgia’s 132 most heinous mur­der­ers over a recent 10-year span, only 29 of them land­ed on death row.
• Fifty of the worst killers avoid­ed death by plead­ing guilty. Some got life sen­tences and will be eli­gi­ble for parole.
• A killer’s chances of fac­ing the death penal­ty increased when the vic­tim was white.

The study found that more pros­e­cu­tors and juries are reject­ing lethal injec­tion in favor of life with­out parole. Since 2000, juries have decid­ed against death in two of every three sen­tenc­ing tri­als. Of 1,315 mur­der cas­es from 1995 through 2004 that could have been pros­e­cut­ed for death, only one in 23 land­ed on death row.

Prosecutors use a vari­ety of fac­tors in decid­ing whether to pur­sue the death penal­ty. As one pros­e­cu­tor put the process, ​“You know it when you see it,” accord­ing to Douglas County District Attorney David McDade.

But for­mer Georgia Chief Justice Norman Fletcher described the ulti­mate result as unpre­dictable: ​“It’s like a roulette wheel,” he said. ​“Arbitrariness is a weak­ness of the death penal­ty.”
(Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Sept. 23, 2007). Read the Series: ​“A Matter of Life or Death.” See Arbitrariness and Studies.


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