Continued Editorial Highlighting of the DPIC Report

Today's Dallas Morning News publishes the editorial, "With death penalty, geography is destiny."

Potter County, population about 122,000, has a lot of people by Texas Panhandle standards, but around Dallas it would be just another suburb.

That doesn’t stop it from being a national death penalty powerhouse.

Responsible for 11 executions since capital punishment resumed in 1976, Potter County ranks 10th of all 3,143 U.S. counties in death sentences carried out, according to a new report from the Death Penalty Information Center. The report illustrates the nation’s grossly uneven use of the death penalty, with 2 percent of the counties responsible for most executions, far out of proportion to their population.

This dreadful phenomenon persists despite the brief national moratorium after a 1972 Supreme Court ruling that declared the death penalty unconstitutional. Among other things, justices cited application that appeared arbitrary and capricious.

Statistics argue that capital punishment is no less arbitrary today and is partly a function of geography and purely local standards of justice. Consider that Potter County put more people in the death chamber than Cuyahoga County, Ohio, with 10 times the population, or even Miami-Dade County, Fla., which has 20 times the population.

Disparities persist also within Texas, as cited in a recent American Bar Association-sponsored analysis. It said more than half the 1,060 Texas death sentences since 1976 were clustered in four counties — Harris, Dallas, Bexar and Tarrant — and that nearly half of Texas’ 254 counties sent no one to death row.

"Report: Some FL Counties Top List for Death Penalty Use," is by Stephanie Carroll Carson for the Orlando Advocate.

Not all counties are created equal when it comes to issuing death penalty sentences in Florida, or the rest of the country. According to a new report by the Death Penalty Information Center,Florida leads the nation for the number of death sentences handed down in the last two years, and has the second-largest death row population in the country. Duval, Clay and Nassau Counties top the list, and all are in the 4th Judicial District.

Political scientist Frank Baumgartner, a professor at the University of North Carolina, explained why there seems to be a concentration in certain areas.

"The small number of jurisdictions apply the death penalty for some reason, and I think the reason is the development of a local prosecutorial culture," he said.

Since 1976, the report says just four states - Florida, Texas, Virginia, and Oklahoma - have been responsible for almost 60 percent of the country's executions. And nationwide, just 2 percent of counties account for a majority of death row inmates.

Baumgartner said that once a death sentence is handed down in a county, prosecutors there are more likely to pursue the punishment in other cases.

Earlier coverage of the DPIC report begins at the link.

The DPIC report is, "THE 2% DEATH PENALTY: How a Minority of Counties Produce Most Death Cases at Enormous Costs to All."  You can find the full report, executive summary, and news release at the links.

Related posts are in the geographic disparity and report category indexes.