(On January 10, DPIC post­ed an item about an edi­to­r­i­al in the New York Times crit­i­ciz­ing the arbi­trari­ness of the death penal­ty. That edi­to­r­i­al relied heav­i­ly on the research of Prof. John Donohue (pic­tured) of Stanford Law School and his study of the Connecticut death penal­ty. This post looks fur­ther at the under­ly­ing study.) Prof. Donohue’s research found that out of thou­sands of mur­ders com­mit­ted in Connecticut between 1973 and 2007, only one result­ed in an exe­cu­tion of the defen­dant. He con­clud­ed that ​“the state’s record of han­dling death-eli­gi­ble cas­es rep­re­sents a chaot­ic and unsound crim­i­nal jus­tice pol­i­cy that serves nei­ther deter­rence nor retribution.…At best, the Connecticut sys­tem hap­haz­ard­ly sin­gles out a hand­ful for exe­cu­tion from a sub­stan­tial array of hor­ri­ble mur­ders,” and that ​“arbi­trari­ness and dis­crim­i­na­tion are defin­ing fea­tures of the state’s cap­i­tal punishment regime.”

Out of 4,686 mur­ders com­mit­ted in the state, Donhue iden­ti­fied 205 death-eli­gi­ble cas­es between 1973 − 2007 that result­ed in a homi­cide con­vic­tion. One hun­dred thir­ty-eight (138) of these were charged with cap­i­tal mur­der, and 92 received cap­i­tal mur­der con­vic­tions. Of the 92 cas­es, 29 went on to a death sen­tenc­ing hear­ing, result­ing in 9 death sen­tences, and one exe­cu­tion (car­ried out in 2005). Among the find­ings of the study, Donohue stated:

  • The Connecticut death penal­ty sys­tem pro­duces results sim­i­lar to the Georgia death penal­ty sys­tem struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in Furman v. Georgia in 1972. In Georgia, 15% of death-eli­gi­ble mur­der con­vic­tions result­ed in death sen­tences, a rate that was con­sid­ered freak­ish­ly rare and there­fore uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Connecticut impos­es sus­tained death sen­tences at a rate of 4.4%, more than two-thirds low­er than the pre-Furman Georgia rate.
  • There is no mean­ing­ful dif­fer­ence between death-eli­gi­ble mur­ders in which pros­e­cu­tors pur­sue the death penal­ty and those in which pros­e­cu­tors do not. Donohue eval­u­at­ed the egre­gious­ness of the 205 death-eli­gi­ble cas­es and found that cas­es in which pros­e­cu­tors pur­sued the death penal­ty were ​“vir­tu­al­ly indis­tin­guish­able” accord­ing to his mea­sures from cas­es where the pros­e­cu­tors did not bring capital charges.
  • Connecticut has not lim­it­ed the death penal­ty to the ​“worst of the worst” crimes. Eight of the state’s nine affirmed death sen­tences were not among the most egre­gious cas­es. In addi­tion, only one of the 32 worst death cas­es result­ed in a death penalty conviction.
  • The focus of the study, lim­it­ed to 205-death eli­gi­ble cas­es, under­states the degree of arbi­trari­ness in the sys­tem. Today, near­ly 40% of all Connecticut mur­ders go unsolved. If this cur­rent rate per­sists, ​“then for every mur­der­er who receives a sus­tained death sen­tence, at least 15 death-eli­gi­ble mur­ders would not be pun­ished at all.”
  • The Connecticut death penal­ty sys­tem results in dis­parate racial out­comes. Minority defen­dants who com­mit death-eli­gi­ble mur­ders of white vic­tims are six times more like­ly to receive a death sen­tence as minor­i­ty defen­dants who com­mit mur­ders of minori­ties. Additionally, minor­i­ty defen­dants who mur­der white vic­tims are three times more like­ly to receive the death penal­ty as white defen­dants who mur­der white vic­tims. Even when con­trol­ling for the type of mur­der, egre­gious­ness or spe­cial aggra­vat­ing fac­tors in a case, minor­i­ty killers of white vic­tims are still treat­ed more harshly.
  • There are dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent sen­tenc­ing stan­dards across the state. For exam­ple, death-eli­gi­ble defen­dants in Waterbury are sen­tenced to death at sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er rates than are the same defen­dants else­where in the state.

(J. Donohue, ​“Capital Punishment in Connecticut, 1973 – 2007: A Comprehensive Evaluation from 4686 Murders to One Execution,” Stanford Law School, National Bureau of Economic Research, October 15, 2011; post­ed by DPIC Jan. 12, 2012). See Arbitrariness and Studies. See also DPIC’s recent report on arbi­trari­ness, ​“Struck by Lightning” and DPIC’s Year End Report, not­ing the declin­ing use of the death penalty.

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