A new report by Professor James S. Liebman (pic­tured) and Peter Clarke from Columbia University Law School ana­lyzes the declin­ing use of the death penal­ty and con­cludes that, although it is abstract­ly sup­port­ed by two-thirds of the pub­lic, the death penal­ty is actu­al­ly prac­ticed by only a dis­tinct minor­i­ty of juris­dic­tions in the United States. In their forth­com­ing arti­cle, ​“Minority Practice, Majority’s Burden: The Death Penalty Today,” Liebman and Clarke attempt to explain why the use of the death penal­ty tends to pre­dom­i­nate in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties, and why rel­a­tive­ly few exe­cu­tions are car­ried out com­pared to the num­ber of death sen­tences imposed. The abstract of the report states, ​“It turns out that the impo­si­tion of death sen­tences, par­tic­u­lar­ly for felony mur­der … pro­vides parochial and lib­er­tar­i­an com­mu­ni­ties with a quick and cheap alter­na­tive to effec­tive law enforce­ment.” The authors con­clude in the body of the report, ​“As spare and unvar­nished as this response is local­ly, it is cost­ly to the major­i­ty of com­mu­ni­ties and their res­i­dents who do not much use the death penal­ty. It leaves crime unat­tend­ed that spills over into neigh­bor­ing com­mu­ni­ties. It gen­er­ates ver­dicts fraught with cost­ly error. It mis­leads the fam­i­ly of mur­der vic­tims into think­ing death ver­dicts will be exe­cut­ed, not just expressed.… Although hid­den and dif­fuse, the costs are so great that one has to won­der why the major­i­ty puts up with them.” The report will be pub­lished in a forth­com­ing vol­ume of the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law.

(J. Liebman and P. Clarke, ​“Minority Practice, Majority’s Burden: The Death Penalty Today,” Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, forth­com­ing; post­ed by DPIC, Aug. 24, 2011). See Arbitrariness, Costs and Studies.

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