"The Geography of Mercy: An Empirical Analysis of Clemency for Death Row Inmates"

The title of this post is the title of this quite-interesting looking empirical piece by Matthew Heise now available via SSRN.  Here is the abstract:

Conventional wisdom notes persistent regional differences in the death penalty’s application with southern states’ appetite for capital punishment exceeding that of non-southern states. Scholars analyzing the distributions of death sentences and state executions find a geographic influence. Less explored, however, is a possible regional difference in the distribution of executive clemency even though clemency is an integral component of criminal justice system that includes capital punishment. If geography influences the distribution of the death penalty, geography should also influence the distribution of clemency.

Data, however, reveal some surprises. Using a recently-released data set of all state death row inmates from 1973-2010, this paper considers whether clemency is exercised in southern and non-southern states in systematically different ways. No statistically significant differences exist between southern and non-southern states when it comes to clemency, even though southern states were more prone to execute and less prone to disturb death sentences through reversal on appeal than northern states. When it comes to the influence of geography in the death penalty context, the findings provide mixed support and convey a complicated picture.