Justice by Lottery: Missouri & the Death Penalty

ore than 15,000 human beings have, tragically, been murdered in Missouri since 1978 when the death penalty was enacted in our state. Our state has executed 71 people (all men) since 1989; only four U.S. states have executed more. Academic studies and articles from journalists in recent years call into question how the death penalty is applied in Missouri, raising red flags about the unfair and arbitrary nature of its application. According to a 2009 study by Katherine Barnes, David Sloss, and Stephan Thaman 95-percent of intentional homicide cases in Missourithough theoretically eligible-- are never presented to the jury as death-penalty cases. Only 2.5-percent of defendants prosecuted for intentional homicide received death sentences. In another 2.5-percent of cases, juries rejected the death penalty. Prosecutors in St. Louis County pursued capital trials in more than 7-percent of the intentional homicide cases in their jurisdiction. In contrast, prosecutors in Jackson County (Kansas City) pursued death sentences in less than one-half of 1-percent of murder cases there. These disparities raise the disturbing possibility that decisions about who lives and who is to be executed may be guided more by the philosophical beliefs of individual prosecutors than the culpability of individual defendants. St. Louis County ranks 9th among all counties in the U.S. in the number of murder convictions leading to executions, according to a 2013 study by the Death Penalty Information Center. The arbitrariness of application of the death penalty is affirmed in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (July 6, 2008). In St. Louis City for instance, after the 2001 election of a new prosecutor, up until 2008, officials there pursued no death sentences. But in neighboring St. Louis County, prosecutors obtained death sentences against 10 people from 2000-08, despite the fact that the county had only one-fourth as many murders as in St. Louis City. Former St. Louis Circuit Attorney Dee Joyce Hayes, acknowledged in the Post-Dispatch article that after 20 years working as a prosecutor and circuit attorney, I never saw a way that you could make the death penalty consistent across jurisdictions, juries, counties, and prosecutors.

ace figures significantly in the application of the death penalty. African-Americans were victims in more than 60% of all homicides from the late 1970s to the present in our state (though constituting less than 15-percent of the population).

Yet 76%-- 54 of the 71 people executed (as of 2/6/14)were convicted of murdering Caucasians. The race of the murder victim, statistically, seems to be the greatest determining factors in who gets the death penalty. Perhaps the most exhaustive review to date of Missouri death-sentencing patterns was published in 2005 by Michael Lenza, David Keys and Teresa Guess. The authors examined court records

of nearly 10,000 homicides from 1978-1996, for their study, The Prevailing Injustices in the Application of the Missouri Death Penalty. Among their troubling findings: Blacks accused of killing White victims were five times more likely to be charged with capital murder than Blacks accused of killing Black victims. Individuals accused of killing a stranger were six times more likely to be charged with capital murder than someone who was acquainted with the victim. Defendants accused of killing female victims were twice as likely to charged with capital murder as were those accused of killing male victims. Defendants with public defenders or court-appointed attorneysreflecting povertylevel incomewere 73% more likely to be sentenced to death by juries in capital trials than defendants who paid for private attorneys. Approximately 1.5 % of all homicides in Missouri resulted in a death sentence.

The lack of predictability of who gets death in our nations justice system is similar to lightening striking observed US Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in his 1972 opinion on capital punishment. For more information contact Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (816-931-4177).