Arbitrariness

In cases with multiple defendants, the "worst" offender does not always receive the worst punishment. For example, in Arizona, Patrick Bearup (pictured) was the only one among four co-defendants to receive the death penalty, even though he was not directly involved in killing the victim. The other three defendants, one of whom instigated the offense, another of whom beat the victim with a baseball bat, and a third who shot the victim, were able to secure plea bargains, avoiding trial. Two of them are likely to be released within 15 years. According to Dale Baich of the federal public defender's office in Arizona, of the six inmates executed there in 2012, four were equally or less culpable than their co-defendants, and 3 of those 4 co-defendants have already been released. A judge who reveiwed Bearup's case, criticized the prosecutor for pursuing the death penalty against a man who “even under the state’s theory, did not cause the physical death” of the  victim. The judge nevertheless upheld the death sentence. In another Arizona county, the prosecutor announced the county could only afford one death penalty case at a time, thereby ending a capital prosecution in an egregious murder, while pursuing it in a comparable case. Christopher Dupont, a lawyer in Arizona said, “Do people who commit equally heinous crimes get the same results? The answer is unquestionably no. It’s a total mystery who is going to face the death penalty and who is not.”

On March 29-31, “Moyers & Company,” hosted by Bill Moyers, will be exploring how the poor and minorities fare under our justice system, and the death penalty in particular. In "And Justice for Some," Moyers interviews Martin Clancy and Tim O’Brien, the authors of the forthcoming Murder at the Supreme Court, and speaks with attorney and legal scholar Bryan Stevenson about the system’s failings and struggles at the crossroads of race, class and justice. “Moyers & Company” airs throughout the country every weekend.

The Texas Tribune recently published a six-part series examining the plight of mentally ill defendants in the Texas criminal justice system. The series focused particularly on death penalty cases, including that of Andre Thomas, a man with a long history of mental illness. He pulled his own eye out in 2004, and later explained that he did it because he kept seeing his wife, whom he killed along with his children just days before. Thomas is among thousands of mentally ill inmates in the Texas system, which has seen years of budget cuts resulting in the reduction of programs. According to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, more than 20% of the 290 inmates on Texas death row are diagnosed with some type of mental illness. One former Texas death row inmate, Anthony Graves, recently told a U.S. Congressional committee that he lived under the "worst conditions imaginable" when he was on death row, which is a form of solitary confinement. He said the cells were filthy and the food contained rodent waste. Inmates with mental illness frequently deteriorated while on death row; some inmates set themselves on fire or smeared feces on their faces. Graves was later cleared of all charges and freed from death row, but said he still has not recovered from the experience. An average of 8,500 Texas prison inmates considered dangerous or troublesome are housed in administrative segregation, another form of solitary confinement, typically for 3 years. Most have no access to rehabilitative programs. 

Officials in Indiana recently discussed how rarely the death penalty is applied in the state and the issues that raises regarding its purpose. Professor Joel Schuum of the McKinney School of Law in Indiana chaired a study by the American Bar Association that found "only a few of Indiana's murder cases result in a prosecutor seeking a death sentence, fewer still result in the imposition of a death sentence by a jury or judges, and only a handful over the past 3 decades have resulted in the execution of a defendant." Schuum added, "It's Indiana's other lottery, because it's hard to decide. You have all these horrible murder cases. Who is the worst person? If only 1 % of these people are going to get the death penalty, what makes someone especially deserving of that?" Indiana Public Defender Council Executive Director Larry Landis agreed, "The rationalization that the proponents give is that: we need the death penalty for the worst of the worst. But, if you look at all the people who have been charged and the people who get the death penalty, no rational person can say--that's the worst of the worst." The discussion arose because prosecutors in Marion County recently elected not to seek death against 3 defendants charged with murder. There has not been a death penalty trial in Marion County in over a decade. The cost of the death penalty may be one reason. A 2010 fiscal report by the Legislative Services Agency found that the average cost of a death penalty trial was around $450,000. Some cases have cost more than $1 million. In contrast, the same study found that the average trial and cost of appeal of a life-without-parole case was one-tenth as much, $42,658. "As soon as they file that notice that they're seeking death, that defendant is going to get 2 lawyers paid at taxpayer expense at over $100 per hour. They're going to get unlimited experts. If there is a jury, it's going to have to be sequestered. There's going to be all sorts of added costs to that," Prof. Schuum noted.