Empirical explorations of modern capital clemency

Michael Heise has recently posted on SSRN two intriguing pieces concerning the modern patterns of capital clemency. Here are links and abstracts:

The Death of Death Row Clemency and the Evolving Politics of Unequal Grace

While America’s appetite for capital punishment continues to wane over time, clemency for death row inmates is all but extinct.  Moreover, what little clemency activity that persists continues to distribute unevenly across gender, racial and ethnic groups, geography, governors’ political affiliation, and over time. Insofar as courts appear extremely reluctant to review — let alone interfere with — clemency activity, little, if any, formal legal recourse exists.  Results from this study of clemency activity on state death rows (1973-2010) suggest that potential problems arise, however, to the extent that our criminal justice system relies on clemency to function as coherent extrajudicial check.

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

Conventional wisdom notes persistent regional differences in the application of the death penalty, 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 a 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 to 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 came 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.