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South Carolina Does Not Use the Death Penalty
Nearly Enough to Even
Pretend
it is Fair.
Consider the Death Sentencing Rate from 1977-1999, the years for
which data
is immediately available:
- Murders with known offenders: 8,451
- Number of death sentences: 138
- % of SC murderers sentenced to death: 0.016
In the period studied, only 16 of 1000 murderers were sentenced to
death. Were they the "worst of the worst?" NO. They were the ones
with
the worst lawyers, the ones who killed in counties with enough money
to
prosecute a death penalty trial, and the ones who killed white
people.
If we are not going to use the ultimate punishment in every case
possible,
then we should not be using it at all.
More information about South Carolina's death penalty is available at
http://www.sceja.org/death penalty/THE DEATH PENALTY IN SOUTH CAROLINA_files/SCdeathpenalty.htm
South Carolina Death Row Statistics are at http://www.sceja.org/SCdeathsentences.htm
SOURCES: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=67&did=915
Death row data are based on the Bureau of Justice Statistics capital
punishment data.
Murder data are based on the FBI's Supplemental Homicide Reports for
19761998.
The death sentence rate is the number of death sentences divided by
the
number of murders with a known offender.
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