A new study by Professor Robert J. Smith of the DePaul University College of Law exam­ines the impo­si­tion of death sen­tences by coun­ties in the U.S. The author, who is also part of The Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard, found that only a rel­a­tive­ly few coun­ties impose a large per­cent­age of death sen­tences, while a large major­i­ty of juris­dic­tions have aban­doned the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Prof. Smith’s study found that death sen­tences that result­ed in exe­cu­tions between 2004 – 2009 were hand­ed down in less than 1% of coun­ties in the United States. He not­ed in the abstract to the study, ​“There is noth­ing to sug­gest that the mur­ders com­mit­ted in those active death-sen­tenc­ing coun­ties are more heinous than mur­ders com­mit­ted in oth­er coun­ties. Nor is there evi­dence to sug­gest that the offend­ers in those coun­ties are more incor­ri­gi­ble than those who com­mit crimes in oth­er coun­ties.” The skewed geog­ra­phy of the death penal­ty might lead to chal­lenges to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the prac­tice under the Eighth Amendment, which bars the arbi­trary appli­ca­tion of a pun­ish­ment. The study, titled ​“The Georgraphy of the Death Penalty and its Ramifications,” will be pub­lished in a forth­com­ing edi­tion of the Boston University Law Review.

(R. Smith, ​“The Geography of the Death Penalty and its Ramifications,” Aug. 22, 2011; Boston University Law Review, forth­com­ing; DPIC post­ed Oct. 19, 2011). See Arbitrariness and Sentencing. See also DPIC’s page on Executions by County.

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