DPI report provides valuable context for 2024 elections

As voters across the United States cast their ballots on Election Day, the July 2024 Death Penalty Information Center report shows: Deadly Choice: How the US Election Process Increases the Arbitrariness of the Death Penaltyprovides valuable context on the intersection of politics and the death penalty.

While all eyes are on the race for U.S. president, local races for prosecutors, state judges, lawmakers and governor will determine whether and how the death penalty is imposed. The president only has jurisdiction over federal death penalty cases, which currently represent about 2% of all death row inmates and 1% of all executions carried out in the United States since 1976. He or she chooses the attorney general, who decides whether to seek the death penalty, sentences in appropriate federal cases, and how to defend existing federal death sentences. The president also has clemency powers for people convicted of federal crimes, including those on federal death row.

Meanwhile, voters in 33 states, including 23 states that have the death penalty, will elect or decide whether to retain state Supreme Court justices on Election Day 2024. As explained in Deadly choice“A 2015 Reuters investigation found that state supreme courts with appointed judges are more than twice as likely to overturn death sentences as state supreme courts with elected judges, a difference of 26% to 11%.” In other words, a death row prisoner in a state where judges have to fight for re-election has a much lower chance of receiving relief on appeal.” The DPI analysis of state Supreme Court decisions in three states from 2013-2022 found that “courts confirmed about twice as many death sentences in election years as in non-election years, a mean of 6 versus 3 death sentences.”… These results suggest that state Supreme Court justices are more likely to pass judgment on death row prisoners when they face the increased scrutiny and pressure of an upcoming election.”

In 14 states that impose the death penalty, local prosecutors are elected in at least one county per state. The United States is the only country in the world that elects local prosecutors. These elected officials have enormous discretion over whether and when to seek death sentences. Changing district attorneys in counties that once led the nation in death sentences, including Philadelphia, PA; Los Angeles, California; and Harris, TX, have led to a dramatic decline in the number of new death sentences.

DPI’s investigations also found that governors’ clemency decisions were influenced by elections. When examining all individual clemency requests granted since 1972, a majority (53.6%) emerged when the governor was not facing re-election. When the executive branch had sole authority to grant clemency, that percentage increased to 84.6%. “This means that executives with sole pardon power exercised their power almost exclusively when they were not facing voters. When they actually ran for re-election, these executives granted clemency to individuals only four times in five decades.”

“The electoral process in the United States brings many elements of unpredictability and injustice to death penalty cases. A life-or-death decision should not depend on whether an appeal or clemency petition is heard in an election year, nor should a defendant’s fate depend on who donated money to an official’s campaign fund,” said Robin M. Maher, executive director from the Death Penalty Information Center. “But the data suggests that’s exactly what’s happening.”