Skip to main content
Article
An Empirical Evaluation of the Connecticut Death Penalty System since 1973: Are There Unlawful Racial, Gender, and Geographic Disparities?
Journal of Empirical Legal Studies (2014)
  • John J. Donohue, Stanford Law School
Abstract

This article analyzes the 205 death-eligible murders leading to homicide convictions in Connecticut from 1973–2007 to determine if discriminatory and arbitrary factors influenced capital outcomes. A regression analysis controlling for an array of legitimate factors relevant to the crime, defendant, and victim provides overwhelming evidence that minority defendants who kill white victims are capitally charged at substantially higher rates than minority defendants who kill minorities, that geography influences both capital charging and sentencing decisions (with the location of a crime in Waterbury being the single most potent influence on which death-eligible cases will lead to a sentence of death), and that the Connecticut death penalty system has not limited its application to the worst of the worst death-eligible defendants. The work of an expert hired by the State of Connecticut provided emphatic, independent confirmation of these three findings, and found that women who commit death-eligible crimes are less likely than men to be sentenced to death.

Keywords
  • death penalty,
  • regressioin analysis,
  • minority defendants,
  • Connecticut
Disciplines
Publication Date
December, 2014
Citation Information
John J. Donohue. "An Empirical Evaluation of the Connecticut Death Penalty System since 1973: Are There Unlawful Racial, Gender, and Geographic Disparities?" Journal of Empirical Legal Studies Vol. 11 Iss. 4 (2014)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/john_donohue/123/