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Criminal Justice

A few DAs account for most death sentences, law prof finds; one calls for more 'revenge' executions

An outspoken Louisiana prosecutor is a prime example of what a law professor describes as “a personality-driven death penalty” in the United States.

Caddo Parish, where acting district attorney Dale Cox works, has sentenced more convicted defendants to death, on a per-capita basis, than perhaps any other county in the country during the past five years, according to the New York Times (reg. req.). Formerly first assistant, he became the parish’s top prosecutor after his boss died in April.

And Cox, 67, says more death sentences, which he views as appropriately motivated by a need for revenge, are needed.

Once an opponent of capital punishment, he said an “increase in savagery” by those who commit crimes justifies the death penalty, although some examples that he uses to support it rely on facts that did not exist in any criminal case he has seen.

“Retribution is a valid societal interest,” he told the Times. “What kind of society would say that it’s OK to kill babies and eat them, and in fact we can have parties where we kill them and eat them, and you’re not going to forfeit your life for that? If you’ve gotten to that point, you’re no longer a society.”

The role that Cox and other pro-death-penalty prosecutors play in its imposition was highlighted in a 2012 Boston University Law Review essay (PDF) by University of North Carolina law professor Robert Smith. It made headlines after it was cited by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer in a dissent to a ruling last week that OK’d lethal injections.

“When you start to look underneath the counties and ask, ‘Who is actually prosecuting these cases?’ you realize in most of the counties it’s one or a limited number of prosecutors,” said Smith.

In addition to Cox, he cited as an example of what he called “a personality-driven death penalty” former Philadelphia district attorney Lynne Abraham. There have been only three capital sentences there in the five years after she departed, versus 45 in the nearly 20 years she worked in the city.