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Disquieting Discretion: Race, Geography & The Colorado Death Penalty In The First Decade Of The Twenty-First Century, Meg Beardsley, Sam Kamin, Justin F. Marceau, Scott Phillips

Sturm College of Law: Faculty Scholarship

This Article demonstrates through original statistical research that prosecutors in Colorado were more likely to seek the death penalty against minority defendants than against white defendants. Moreover, defendants in Colorado’s Eighteenth Judicial District were more likely to face a death prosecution than defendants elsewhere in the state. Our empirical analysis demonstrates that even when one controls for the differential rates at which different groups commit statutorily death-eligible murders, non-white defendants and defendants in the Eighteenth Judicial District were still more likely than others to face a death penalty prosecution. Even when the heinousness of the crime is accounted for, the …