Study Analyzes Causes of ​“Astonishing Plunge” in Death Sentences in the United States

Multiple fac­tors — from declin­ing mur­der rates to the aban­don­ment of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment by many rur­al coun­ties and sub­stan­tial­ly reduced usage in out­lier coun­ties that had aggres­sive­ly imposed it in the past — have col­lec­tive­ly led to an ​“aston­ish­ing plunge” in death sen­tences over the last twen­ty years, accord­ing to a new study, Lethal Rejection, pub­lished in the 2017/​2018 Albany Law Review. Using data on death-eli­gi­ble cas­es from 1994, 2004, and 2014, Drake University law pro­fes­sor David McCord and Niagara University crim­i­nal jus­tice pro­fes­sor Talia Roitberg Harmon exam­ined a range of fac­tors to deter­mine what caused the more than 75% reduc­tion in death sen­tences in the U.S. between 1994 and 2014. (Click image to enlarge.) The authors found that just over half the decline could be attrib­uted to a reduc­tion in the num­ber of poten­tial­ly death-eli­gi­ble mur­ders, as a result of a com­bi­na­tion of low­er mur­der rates, Supreme Court deci­sions mak­ing mur­ders com­mit­ted by intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled offend­ers and offend­ers aged 17 or younger inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty, and the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty by six states. The rest of the decline, they said, was attrib­ut­able to sub­jec­tive deci­sions by pros­e­cu­tors and sen­tencers, a fac­tor they called ​“chang­ing per­cep­tions of death-wor­thi­ness.” Murders in the 37 states that autho­rized the death penal­ty in 1994 fell from 19,250 that year to 12,440 in 2014 — a 35.4% decline. However, death sen­tences dropped by more than dou­ble that rate, from 310 to 73 — a 76.5% decline. McCord and Harmon also attempt­ed to iden­ti­fy fac­tors that con­tributed to pros­e­cu­tors’ and sen­tencers’ per­cep­tions of death wor­thi­ness, which account­ed for near­ly half of the death-sen­tenc­ing decline. The addi­tion of life with­out parole as a sen­tenc­ing option did not, they said, have a sig­nif­i­cant impact in low­er­ing death sen­tences, except in Texas. Rather, they found that death sen­tences were being sought and imposed at low­er rates in less aggra­vat­ed mur­der cas­es, in cas­es with mul­ti­ple per­pe­tra­tors, and against defen­dants under age 21. They also found two types of sig­nif­i­cant geo­graph­i­cal effects: death-sen­tenc­ing dropped sig­nif­i­cant­ly in low-pop­u­la­tion coun­ties across the coun­try and in five of the nation’s high­est vol­ume death-sen­tenc­ing coun­ties (Harris, TX; Cook, IL; Pima, AZ; Philadelphia, PA; and Miami-Dade, FL). While the researchers did not report how many few­er death sen­tences were imposed in these coun­ties in 2014, they described the decline as hav­ing an ​“out­sized” effect on the nation­al total. They con­clude, ​“The decline in death sen­tenc­ing in the United States from 1994 has been rel­a­tive­ly rapid, quite steep, and is con­tin­u­ing — from the end­point of our dataset, death sen­tences declined from 73 in 2014 to 49 in 2015; and in 2016 only 31 death sen­tences were imposed. The American death penal­ty seems like an ever-cranki­er ver­sion of the Cheshire Cat: it is grudg­ing­ly dis­ap­pear­ing, leav­ing behind only its frown.”

(David McCord and Talia Roitberg Harmon, Lethal Rejection: An Empirical Analysis of the Astonishing Plunge in Death Sentences in the United States from Their Post-Furman Peak, 81 Albany L. Rev. 1 (2017 – 2018)) See Studies, Law Reviews and Sentencing.