A Power-Law Analysis of the Uneven Geographic Distribution of Executions in the Post-Furman Era of the Death Penalty
Creators: name: Gram, Wallace
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2015

description: In 1972 the United States Supreme Court ruled in Furman v. Georgia that the application of the death penalty was arbitrary and capricious, and placed a hold on executions until states could prove they had created a more consistent system for death sentencing. By 1976, 37 states had reenacted the death penalty under the claim that they had created a more consistent method. However, current statistics on the application of the death penalty in the United States show that racial and geographic inequity remains the status quo. Although a large amount of research concerning racial inequity in the imposition of capital punishment in the United States exists, statistical analysis and data on the extent of geographic inequality remains limited. The 1972 Furman majority opinion explains “that the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments cannot tolerate the infliction of a sentence of death under legal systems that permit this unique penalty to be so wantonly and so freakishly imposed”. Thus, the United States Supreme Court ruled that executions be postponed until the creation and implementation of a less arbitrary system of imposing death. Since 1976, 1,373 individuals have been executed in the United States under the promise that the post-Furman capital punishment system is no longer unfairly distributed. However, an overview of literature on the death penalty trends, combined with new statistics on homicides and executions in the United States1 supports three hypotheses contrary to the concept that capital punishment is operating within an equitable system in the post-Furman era due to the severe unequal geographic distributions that define execution patterns since 1977. Hypothesis #1: A large majority of executions occur in a very small number of counties and many counties have few or no executions. Hypothesis #2: The geographic distribution of executions follows a power-law, suggesting that the outcome of capital punishment cases is heavily correlated with the location of the trial due to historical developments. This remains true even when possible lurking variables are controlled, including population and homicide numbers.
Hypothesis #3: This geographic inequality is a result of the existence of a self-perpetuating local legal culture that either promotes or prohibits executions2.
An overview of previously published research on the distribution of executions in combination with previously unpublished statistical analysis using an original dataset will illustrate the large inequalities in the geographic distribution of executions within United States. The unequal geographic distribution of executions in America is especially striking when examined through the lens of the 8th Amendment due to its severe nature and unusual geographic pattern. The fact that the death penalty continues to persist in such an unequal manner not only violates the 14th Amendment right to “equal protection of the laws” but also violates the 1972 United States Supreme Court Furman ruling that the death penalty not be imposed in an unequal or biased manner.