Inequalities in the Death Penalty

Abstract This chapter addresses contemporary empirical research on inequalities in death penalty prosecution and sentencing, with a specific focus on disparities connected to the race of defendants and victims, the gender of victims, and especially geographic/jurisdictional disparities between courts. I argue that geographic arbitrariness is the most important inequality in American capital punishment. Moreover, racial and gender disparities connected to defendants and victims also are locally variable, meaning the degree to which race or gender matters in death penalty outcomes depends upon the jurisdiction in question. While capital punishment law structures capital punishment, that legal framework is implemented by local prosecutors, juries, and judges who make sense of cases and make decisions based on local norms and practices. These between-court differences mean that the very enterprise of the capital punishment in the United States has geographic arbitrariness inherently embedded in it.