Both Robert Aaron Long and Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa were arrested last month for allegedly carrying out high-profile shootings that killed a large number of people. Both crimes have revived our national debates on guns.
But only one of the men has a realistic chance of ending up in the realm of the dead.
Colorado, where Alissa is on trial, is one of 23 states that have abolished the death penalty. Georgia, where Long was arrested, is one of 27 still serving the sentence on the books. It is also among a smaller proportion of 15 countries that someone has executed in the past decade, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
And then there is California, where Aminadab Gaxiola Gonzalez was arrested last week, presumably killing four people, including a child. The death penalty there is more of a symbol than reality: California Gavin Newsom has imposed a moratorium on executions, which has not been carried out in the state since 2006. But local prosecutors regularly send people to death prison for a virtual life. sentence. Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer has already told reporters he will consider seeking the death penalty for Gonzalez.
State laws are only part of the picture, because depending on the investigations, the Department of Justice may be able to impose the death penalty for federal crimes. The fate of these men will be determined by decision-makers, ranging from local district attorneys to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, and serve as the latest examples of the strange geographical differences of U.S. death penalty.
The death penalty is disappearing: although Georgia is still executing people, the entire state has sent only one person to death since 2015. Across the country, it is now clear that whether you get the death penalty has less to do with what you did than where you did it. In 2013, the Death Penalty Information Center reported that all the death tolls in the entire country came from only 20 percent of the provinces, and that most executions were produced by only 2 percent of the provinces.
Why these provinces? Some are populated, meaning there are more murders that could qualify for death sentences and larger tax base that can handle the high cost of capital trials. Last year, a group of scholars led by Frank Baumgartner at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill compiled a database of more than 8,500 death sentences handed out across the country since 1972. They found provinces where lynchings were carried out during the Jim Crow. in the early 20th century, people would still be sentenced to death more today. The findings are consistent with other studies showing racial differences on the death row, as well as the greater likelihood of a death sentence when the victim is white.
But perhaps the most important factor, in each case, is also the simplest: who is the prosecutor?
Even if Colorado had not abolished the death penalty last year, Alissa would surely have avoided that fate. Although he is accused of killing ten people in a Boulder grocery store on March 22, voters and elected officials in the liberal Colorado province where he was arrested have long opposed the death penalty. The current district attorney even asked President Joe Biden to end it at the federal level.
Long-term is charged in two different Georgia provinces. He allegedly killed four people in Fulton County, which includes a large urban part of Atlanta and where all three candidates for district attorneys last year would never seek the death penalty. There has been a political shift from the death penalty in many large, urban provinces, including Philadelphia and Los Angeles.
“What you see is a big consensus among prosecutors that the death penalty is immoral, or that it is not worth the money, or that it offers a limited benefit to public safety,” said Amanda Marzullo, a defense attorney in Texas and the death penalty expert, said. “There are actually only about 25 provinces nationwide where the death penalty is regularly demanded.”
Long also allegedly killed four people and wounded a fifth in Cherokee County, who has never shot anyone dead. The province has a Republican district attorney, Shannon Wallace, who promised in a press release to prosecute the killings “to the full extent of the law.” It is not yet clear whether Long’s case is eligible for a death sentence. A Wallace spokesman does not rule out the possibility and stresses that the crimes are still being investigated.
Much of the case – whether more charges are going to come, or whether the families of the victims will descend in public in some way – is still unknown and local observers predict a “tug of war” between prosecutors over jurisdiction.
“Prosecutors are only looking for death in a small fraction of cases,” said Anna Arceneaux, executive director of the Georgia Resource Center, who defends people on the state’s death struggle. “This leads to geographical differences, not only in the states but also in the judicial circles in Georgia itself.” She said prosecutors should also consider Long’s mental health and background, as well as whether the cost of a death sentence could be used instead to “prevent further violence against Asian Americans.”
Wallace’s office does not have a long record of death sentences. Scholars have found that the best predictor of whether a country will seek death is whether it has been done before. “Once a country imposes the death penalty, it gets better at it,” Baumgartner said. Prosecutors use past rulings as comparisons; if the province sent many people to death, the beam could look lower.
This is likely to be the case in Orange County, California, which, according to Baumgartner’s data, has sent more than 80 people to death since the 1970s. The county has been responsible for two of the state’s 13 executions in the past half century, and district attorney Todd Spitzer has executed him against the state’s moratorium.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in his disagreement that the death penalty can violate the Constitution today because it is imposed ‘arbitrarily’ from place to place. He cited research that suggests death sentences can be explained by whether lawyers are adequately funded and whether judges have political pressure. One scholar uses the phrase “local muscle memory” to describe how different factors inform each other, by creating feedback loops.
Judge Antonin Scalia disregarded the works cited by Breyer as ‘abolition studies’. Former Texas prosecutor Lynn Hardaway has pointed out that geographical differences can also be a problem when considering justice for victims, who do not ‘have the luxury of deciding’ where they will be killed.
Some prosecutors are fine with the differences. “Prosecution is and should be a local matter,” said Johnny Holmes, the former district attorney for Harris County, Texas, noting that the 10th Amendment to the Constitution delegates power to the states. ‘That’s why I will not go over the issue on national television. It’s nobody’s business except Texans. ‘
Holmes’ own office was known for its culture of seeking death in the 1980s and 1990s, as Houston became the ‘capital of the death penalty’. Holmes handed out syringe-shaped pens and his prosecutors who won death sentences joined an informal ‘Silver Needle Society’.
“In similar cases, you will receive divergent sentences between jurisdictions,” said Shannon Edmonds, a staff member of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association. ‘But if each of the local communities thinks that the sentences are a fair outcome, then it is fair micro level, even if there are inequalities at macro level. ”
In theory, some of the geographic differences could be alleviated by the Department of Justice, which could prosecute a death sentence in any state for federal crimes. Instead of making the punishment more equitable, one study showed that there are also geographic and racial differences in who also gets federal death sentences.
It is too early to say whether federal prosecutors will try to define any of the shootings as a federal crime, but there are many precedents: After the Boston Marathon bombing, they sought death for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, although Massachusetts did not carry the death penalty not. . Then they sought death for Dylann Roof, because he killed several churchgoers in South Carolina, even though he could have imposed the same punishment in a state court.
These cases took place under President Barack Obama, even though he expressed doubts about the ultimate punishment. We do not yet know much about the Biden administration’s approach to the subject, although he has vowed on the campaign to end the practice. More mass shooting incidents will definitely test the promise.