Arbitrariness

Executions in Louisiana are like Lightening-Strikes

In Louisiana, there have 28 executions since 1961, and over 30,000 murders (less than 1 in a thousand). In the last 15 years, there has been one execution for almost 8,000 murders.

The death penalty in Louisiana is not reserved for the “worst of the worst”. Instead, a death sentence is more closely correlated with race, geography, deficient defense lawyers, and the most zealous prosecutors.

 Geography

• In the past fifteen years, only 12 of Louisiana’s 64 parishes have sent defendants to death row. The remaining fifty-two parishes have not sent a single defendant to death row in this time period.

• Two parishes are responsible for 42% of the death sentences in Louisiana over the last fifteen years.

• Caddo Parish led the entire nation in per capita death sentences between 2011 and 2015.

• Four parishes, Caddo, East Baton Rouge, Orleans, and Jefferson, are responsible for 60% of the individuals on death row.

Deficient Defense

Whether a defendant is sentenced to death depends more on who is appointed as his lawyer than what he did.

• 20% of the individuals sentenced to death between 2005-2014 were represented by the same lawyer, who had his law license suspended 3 times.

• Seventeen of the last 50 people sentenced to death were represented by five lawyers who were later decertified for providing poor representation.

• Four of the people on death row represented themselves.

Overzealous Prosecutors

• A small number of prosecutors account for a disproportionate number of death sentences across the country; a recent study found that just three prosecutors personally obtained a combined total of 131 death sentences, the equivalent of one in every 25 people on death row in America today.

• In Louisiana, two prosecutors secured half of the death sentences between 2010 and 2015

• Just four prosecutors secured 19 of the last 50 death sentences between 2000 and today.

 Race

Louisiana continues to have a sordid history of race discrimination in the administration of criminal justice.

• No white person has been executed in Louisiana for a crime against a black victim since 1752.

• 52 of the 73 (71%) individuals on Louisiana’s death row are Black or Hispanic. Of the 42 individuals on death row from East Baton Rouge, Caddo, Orleans and Jefferson, 37 (88%) are black or Hispanic.

• A black man who kills a white woman is thirty times more likely to be sentenced to death than a black man who kills a black man.

• Studies show that African-American citizens are more likely to be wrongfully convicted than whites. Nine of the eleven of those wrongfully sentenced to death in Louisiana were black.

• Prosecutors strike African-American jurors at three times the rate of whites. Four convictions and death sentences have been reversed based upon race discrimination in jury selection.

Broken Defendants

The overwhelming majority of those facing execution today have diminished culpability.

• A  recent study indicates that, of the 100 people executed during 2012 and 2013, the vast majority suffered from one or more significant cognitive and behavioral deficits

• Nineteen individuals on Louisiana’s death row have significant intellectual disabilities with IQ more than 20 points below normal

• Fourteen individuals on Louisiana’s death row were under 21 when their crime was committed.