[pf] Death sentence statistics; I'm glad I don't live in the USA!

· My son sent me this just now. (He's at the other computer here in the
house, but character-strings that have to be 100% correct like URLs, go by
e-mail)

Death sentence statistics:

http://justice.policy.net/jpreport/section2.html
  which contains:
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 {For description of how the review project got started, see webpage above}

High error rates pervade American capital-sentencing jurisdictions, and are
geographically dispersed. Among the 26 death-sentencing _jurisdictions_
with at least one case reviewed in both the state and federal courts and as
to which information about all three judicial inspection stages is available:

   1. 24 (92%) have overall error rates of 52% or higher; 

   2. 22 (85%) have overall errors rates of 60% or higher;

   3. 15 (61%) have overall error rates of 70% or higher.

   4. Among other states, Maryland, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi,
      Indiana, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Montana, Arizona, and California
      have overall error rates of 75% or higher.[#en47] {notes refer to e.g.:
http://justice.policy.net/jpreport/endnotes.html#en47 }

 It sometimes is suggested that Illinois, whose governor declared a
moratorium on executions in January 2000 because of a spate of death row
exonerations there,[#en48] generates "uniquely" flawed death
sentences.[#en49] Our data dispute this suggestion: The overall rate of
serious error found to infect Illinois capital sentences (66%) actually is
slightly lower than the nationwide average (68%).[#en50]

 High error rates have persisted for decades. A majority of all cases
reviewed in 20 of the 23 study years—including in 17 of the last 19
years—were found seriously flawed. In half of the years studied, the error
rate was over 60%. Although error rates detected on state direct appeal and
federal habeas corpus dropped some in the early 1990s, they went back up in
1995 [#en51]. The amount of error detected on state post-conviction has
apparently risen throughout the 1990s.[#en52]

 The 68% rate of capital error found by the three stage inspection process
is much higher than the error rate of less than 15% found by those same
three inspections in noncapital criminal cases.
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sent on by David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/index.html
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