"The Politics of Life and Death".

"The Politics of Life and Death" by Dan Horn, Cincinnati Enquirer, April 15, 2007

Opponents of the death penalty have always argued that it is unevenly applied. But an April 15 article by the Cincinnati Enquirer's Dan Horn exposes just how much an inmate's fate may depend on random chance. In Ohio, Kentucky, Michigan, and Tennessee, Horn found, the outcome of a death row inmate's appeal rests almost entirely on whether the randomly selected three-judge panel that hears his case has a Republican or a Democratic majority. Horn and the Enquirer staff arrived at this conclusion by analyzing every death penalty appeals decision issued since 2000 by the Sixth Circuit, the federal appeals court with jurisdiction over those four states. The results were disturbing. Judges appointed by Republican presidents voted against death penalty appeals 85 percent of the time; judges appointed by Democratic presidents voted in favor of at least part of the inmates' appeals in 75 percent of the cases. In other words, an inmate's fate is determined not by the merits of the case but by an unfortunate mix of luck and judicial politics. To illustrate this point, Horn describes the case of Paul Gregory House. A court with a liberal majority approved House's appeal in 2002. Two years later, a conservative-dominated bench denied House relief. Horn concludes: "While it's a given that liberal and conservative judges often view the death penalty differently, some lawyers say the split exposed by House's case is now so dramatic it raises fundamental questions about the fairness of the system."