Criminal Law Commons^™

Place Mattters (Most): An Empirical Study Of Prosecutorial Decision-Making In Death-Eligible Cases, Katherine Y. Barnes, David L. Sloss, Stephen C. Thaman

All Faculty Scholarship

This article investigates prosecutorial discretion in death penalty prosecution in Missouri. Based upon an empirical analysis of all intentional-homicide cases from 1997-2001, this article concludes that Missouri law gives prosecutors unconstitutionally broad discretion in charging these cases. This article also finds that prosecutors exercise this broad discretion differently, leading to geographic and racial disparities in sentencing, and concludes with proposals for statutory reform.