A recent study by researchers at Cornell Law School found that the gen­der of the mur­der vic­tim may influ­ence whether a defen­dant receives the death penal­ty. Using data from 1976 to 2007 in Delaware, the study found that in cas­es with female vic­tims, 47.1% result­ed in death sen­tences, while in those involv­ing male vic­tims, only 32.3% were sen­tenced to death. The researchers looked at a num­ber of fac­tors oth­er than the vic­tim’s gen­der that might have affect­ed sen­tenc­ing deci­sions, includ­ing the heinous­ness of the crime, whether there was a sex­u­al ele­ment to the mur­der, and the rela­tion­ship between defen­dant and vic­tim. The study found that some of the gen­der effect in sen­tenc­ing could be explained by fac­tors oth­er than just the gen­der of the vic­tim. Crimes involv­ing sex­u­al vio­lence were more like­ly to result in a death sen­tence, as were crimes in which the vic­tim and defen­dant knew one anoth­er, and vic­tims of both of those types of crimes are more like­ly to be women.

The authors con­clud­ed, ​“While more research needs to be done, using both larg­er data­bas­es and infor­ma­tion from oth­er regions, our analy­ses sug­gest that vic­tim gen­der con­tin­ues to influ­ence cap­i­tal sentencing decisions.”

(C. Royer, et al., ​“Victim Gender and the Death Penalty,” 82 University of Missouri-Kansas City Law Review 429 (forth­com­ing, 2014)). See Studies, Arbitrariness, and Women.

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