Race and the Decision to Seek the Death Penalty in Federal Cases, 1995-2000 [United States]

The purpose of this project was to examine possible
 defendant and victim race effects in capital decisions in the federal
 system. Per the terms of their grant, the researchers selected cases
 that were handled under the revised Death Penalty Protocol of 1995 and
 were processed during Attorney General Janet Reno's term in office.
 The researchers began the project by examining a sample of Department
 of Justice Capital Case Unit (CCU) case files. These files contained
 documents submitted by the United States Attorney's Office (USAO), a
 copy of the indictment, a copy of the Attorney General's Review
 Committee on Capital Cases (AGRC's) draft and final memorandum to the
 Attorney General (AG), and a copy of the AG's decision letter. Next,
 they created a list of the types of data that would be feasible and
 desirable to collect and constructed a case abstraction form and
 coding rules for recording data on victims, defendants, and case
 characteristics from the CCU's hard-copy case files. The record
 abstractors did not have access to information about defendant or
 victim gender or race. Victim and defendant race and gender data were
 obtained from the CCU's electronic files. Five specially trained
 coders used the case abstraction forms to record and enter salient
 information in the CCU hard-copy files into a database. Coders worked
 on only one case at a time. The resulting database contains 312 cases
 for which defendant- and victim-race data were available for the 94
 federal judicial districts. These cases were received by the CCU
 between January 1, 1995 and July 31, 2000, and for which the AG at the
 time had made a decision about whether to seek the death penalty prior
 to December 31, 2000. The 312 cases includes a total of 652 defendants
 (see SAMPLING for cases not included). The AG made a seek/not-seek
 decision for 600 of the defendants, with the difference between the
 counts stemming mainly from defendants pleading guilty prior to the AG
 making a charging decision. The database was structured to allow
 researchers to examine two stages in the federal prosecution process,
 namely the USAO recommendation to seek or not to seek the death
 penalty and the final AG charging decision. Finally, dispositions
 (e.g., sentence imposed) were obtained for all but 12 of the
 defendants in the database. Variables include data about the
 defendants and victims such as age, gender, race/ethnicity,
 employment, education, marital status, and the relationship between
 the defendant and victim. Data are provided on the defendant's
 citizenship (United States citizen, not United States citizen), place
 of birth (United States born, foreign born), offense dates, statute
 code, counts for the ten most serious offenses committed, defendant
 histories of alcohol abuse, drug abuse, mental illness, physical or
 sexual abuse as a child, serious head injury, intelligence (IQ), or
 other claims made in the case. Information is included for up to 13
 USAO assessments and 13 AGRC assessments of statutory and
 non-statutory aggravating factors and mitigating factors. Victim
 characteristics included living situation and other reported factors,
 such as being a good citizen, attending school, past abuse by the
 defendant, gross size difference between the victim and defendant, if
 the victim was pregnant, if the victim had a physical handicap, mental
 or emotional problems or developmental disability, and the victim's
 present or former status (e.g., police informant, prison inmate, law
 enforment officer). Data are also provided for up to 13 factors each
 regarding the place and nature of the killing, defendant motive,
 coperpetrators, weapons, injuries, witnesses, and forensic and other
evidence.

Tags: capital-punishment, defendants, district-courts, federal-courts, judicial-process, race, victims, witness-credibility, witnesses
Organization: Department of Justice