A new report from Harvard Law School's Fair Punishment Project analyzes the records of five of America’s deadliest head prosecutors, four men and one woman with a dogged obsession with the death penalty. The report, which also highlights ten runners-up for the title of deadliest prosecutor, is a critical reminder of how much power prosecutors have—and how that power, combined with little oversight, can mean life or death.
The five prosecutors, only one of which is still in office, are responsible for a staggering number of death sentences. From the report:
Three of them personally obtained over 35 death sentences each: Joe Freeman Britt in North Carolina, Bob Macy in Oklahoma, and Donnie Myers in South Carolina. The remaining two prosecutors, Lynne Abraham (Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania) and Johnny Holmes (Harris County, Texas)…oversaw the imposition of death sentences against a staggering 108 and 201 people, respectively, during their terms.
For all five, the death penalty was an ideology they prescribed to wholeheartedly. “Within the breast of each of us burns a flame that constantly whispers in our ear ‘preserve life, preserve life, preserve life at any cost, It is the prosecutor’s job to extinguish that flame,’” said Britt, who ranks as the number one deadliest prosecutor with 38 death sentences on his record. Macy “once told a jury that sentencing the defendant to death was a “patriotic duty” similar to military service.” And Myers basically said that sentencing people to death was the only thing keeping him alive. From the report:
Bill Nettles, currently a United States Attorney for the District of South Carolina, said of Myers, “The only reason he gets up in the morning is to try death penalty cases. Virtually the only time you see him in the courtroom is when he’s trying to kill people.” Myers himself explained, “This is about all I’ve got. If I had to go home and be by myself, I would shoot my damn self."
What makes these cases even scarier is the massive rate of alleged misconduct. Prosecutorial misconduct was found in about one-third of Britt and May’s cases, and almost half of Myer’s. At least one defendant in all five districts was ultimately exonerated. In other words, these are people who have been found to have violated ethical and legal standards in their role as prosecutor, and yet we give them the power to put people to death. “These aren’t the people you want prosecuting a parking ticket much less making a decision about who deserves to die,” says Rob Smith, Senior Research Fellow at Harvard Law School.
The importance of this report, though, goes beyond identifying these prosecutors. It highlights just how critical geography is when it comes to capital punishment. Just a few prosecutors are keeping this barbaric tradition in sentencing alive.
Nationally, the death penalty is falling out of favor, which Justice Breyer pointed out last year in his dissent in Glossip v. Gross.
If we look to States, in more than 60% there is effectively no death penalty, in an additional 18% an execution is rare and unusual, and 6%, i.e., three States, account for 80% of all executions. If we look to population, about 66% of the Nation lives in a State that has not carried out an execution in the last three years. And if we look to counties, in 86% there is effectively no death penalty. It seems fair to say that it is now unusual to find capital punishment in the United States, at least when we consider the Nation as a whole.
Yes, the death penalty is becoming increasingly rare, but as Breyer pointed out, in some places the death penalty is still regularly pursued. And the disparity is not just among states, but among counties. A small number of counties are responsible for the fact that the death penalty is still in operation. "Geography is important in understanding the death penalty," says Smith. "But our results show that geography, in part, is a proxy not for differing community value but instead for a few peculiar prosecutors."