A recent study of the mil­i­tary death penal­ty by Professor David Baldus revealed dis­par­i­ties depend­ing on whether the vic­tim in the under­ly­ing crime was also a mem­ber of the mil­i­tary or was a civil­ian. The paper was co-authored by Professors Catherine Grosso and George Woodworth and will be pub­lished by the Michigan Journal of Law Reform. The authors note that despite a 1984 exec­u­tive order that ​“defined death eli­gi­ble mur­der in the armed forces prin­ci­pal­ly in terms of civil­ian mur­der mod­eled after state law sys­tems,” the mil­i­tary death penal­ty has been imple­ment­ed in such a way that shows a large dis­par­i­ty between mil­i­tary mur­der and civil­ian mur­der. The study con­clud­ed that sol­diers who are accused of civil­ian mur­der were less like­ly to face a cap­i­tal court mar­tial, to receive a cap­i­tal con­vic­tion, and to be sen­tenced to death than sol­diers who were accused of a mil­i­tary mur­der (mur­der of a com­mis­sioned or non-com­mis­sioned offi­cer). ​“In this process,” the report said, ​“the mil­i­tary death penal­ty has come to be used almost exclu­sive­ly as a dis­ci­pli­nary vehi­cle to pro­tect the author­i­ty and effec­tive­ness of military command.”

(C. Grosso, D. Baldus, and G. Woodworth, ​“The Impact of Civilian Aggravating Circumstances on the Military Death Penalty: Another Chapter in the Resistance of the Armed Forces to the Civilianization of Military Justice, 1984 – 2005,” Research Paper No. 07 – 13, Michigan State University College of Law, June 18, 2009). See also U.S. Military and Studies.

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