USA - Louisiana. 12% on Louisiana's death row are ever executed

Few on Louisiana's death row are ever executed, largely owing to reversals, analysis finds. Louisiana, which has led the nation in homicide rates every year since 1989, sentences plenty of murderers to death but rarely executes them, in part because a huge proportion of death verdicts are reversed on appeal, according to a new study. The report, published in the Southern University Law Center's "Journal of Race, Gender and Poverty," examined each of the 241 death sentences handed down in Louisiana over the past 30 years. Just 28 of those sentenced to death - less than 12 % - have been executed. Meanwhile, 127 of the death verdicts, more than 1/2 the total, have been reversed, meaning that either a new trial was ordered or the death sentence was rescinded. That number includes 9 exonerations. The "extremely high" reversal rates in parishes throughout Louisiana, combined with what political science professor Frank Baumgartner and statistician Tim Lyman call "shocking" racial discrepancies, make the state's experience with capital punishment "deeply dysfunctional," the authors said. The 2 published an earlier article based on their data that focused on racial disparities in the application of the death penalty. They found that those who killed white people were more than 10 times as likely as those who killed black people to be executed. Their latest article homes in on the modern era of the death penalty, starting after the 1976 Gregg v. Georgia decision, in which the Supreme Court reaffirmed the constitutionality of capital punishment. The trends the authors identified also are seen in other death penalty states, but they are exaggerated in Louisiana. For instance, Louisiana's rate of executions is 4.5 % points lower than the national average, and the rate of reversals is almost 10 % points higher. "People don't realize, nationally speaking, that after you're handed down a death sentence, your odds of being executed are 13 %," said Baumgartner, a professor at the University of North Carolina who has been studying the death penalty for 15 years. "The numbers we see in Louisiana are even worse than nationally, which is amazing." Louisiana hasn't executed a convict since 2010. Prosecutors around the state have been increasingly reluctant to seek the ultimate penalty in recent years - in part, perhaps, for pragmatic reasons. Data suggest most district attorneys are now seeking death only in the most heinous of crimes. A study on the cost of the death penalty in Louisiana is pending. Studies in other states, however, have found that seeking the death penalty over life without parole adds as much as $1 million in prosecution costs alone. And roughly 1/3 of the money Louisiana spends on public defenders goes to private firms representing capital murder defendants, one reason the state's indigent defense system is strapped for cash. In an interview, Baumgartner said it would be easier for states to simply eliminate death penalty as an option, as it also would eliminate costly appeals - especially because a death sentence is statistically likely to be overturned anyway.