Choosing Those Who Will Die: The Effect of Race, Gender, and Law in Prosecutorial Decision to Seek the Death Penalty in Durham County, North Carolina

Abstract:     
District prosecutors in the United States exercise virtually unfettered power and discretion to decide which murder cases to prosecute for capital punishment. According to neoclassical theory of formal legal rationality, the process for determining criminal punishment should be based upon legal rules established and sanctioned by the state to communicate the priorities of the political community. The theory therefore argues in favor of a determinate mode of decision making that diminishes the importance of extrinsic elements such as race and gender in the application of law. In the empirical research herein reported, I test this theory using death eligible cases in Durham County, North Carolina from 2003 to 2007.

The analysis indicates that although law has an important effect in determining criminal punishment, extrinsic elements such as race and gender overwhelm the law in influencing prosecutorial decisions to go for death. Durham county prosecutors are 43 percent more likely to seek the death penalty when a black defendant kills a white victim compared to a situation where a black defendant kills a black victim. The analysis also demonstrates the existence of a gender gap in prosecutorial decision making. Female murder victims are significantly more likely to precipitate a capital prosecution compared to male victims. These results have important policy implications. Despite publicized attempts by the Supreme Court to eradicate the twin evils of arbitrariness and discrimination from our system of capital punishment, these problems persist. Therefore, it is important for policy makers to devise explicit mechanisms to channel the discretionary judgments of local prosecutors toward greater reliance upon legal precepts rather than extra-legal considerations such as race and sex. As Justice William Brennan warned in his dissent in McKleskey v. Kemp, “The way in which we choose those who will die reveals the depth of moral commitment among the living.”

Number of Pages in PDF File: 45

Keywords: race, gender, law, capital punishment, death penalty, prosecutorial discretion, Durham County, North Carolina

JEL Classification: K14, K41

Accepted Paper Series