Capital sentencing in Maricopa County: like getting struck by lightning?

For the death penalty to be justified, it must be reserved for the worst of the worst. In his 2011 study of Connecticut's death penalty system, however, John Donohue found that arbitrariness and discrimination are defining features. Donohue's finding that non-white defendants whose victims were white are six times more likely to receive the death penalty indicates that race is more a predictor of a death sentence than the egregiousness of the crime. An analysis of capital sentencing outcomes in Maricopa County, Arizona reveals that the race of the victim is not related to the likelihood of receiving a death sentence, but the race of the defendant is. Use of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), logistic regression, and an egregiousness calculation are employed to analyze capital sentencing trial outcomes in Maricopa County from 2009 through 2011. This triangulated approach is applied to test three theoretically-derived models - the Donohue model, the Illinois Commission model, and the Functional model. The findings indicate that during the given time period in Maricopa County, the race of the defendant was statistically significant in cases with low to mid-levels of egregiousness, but was no longer significant in the most egregious cases. The results also reveal that the most egregious cases, typically indicated by the presence of a prior conviction and multiple victims, are nearly five times more likely to result in an outcome of death. While the results of this study are suggestive only, because of the small sample size and the relatively brief duration of time studied, the conclusions presented aim to provoke further inquiry into states' death penalty systems to address Donohue's allegation of unconstitutional application nationwide. Through a drastic reduction of death-eligibility factors, implementation of a transparent plea bargaining protocol in which the presence of certain aggravating factors preempts the possibility of a plea, and equal funding for prosecutor and defense offices, the death penalty in this country could begin to target the worst of the worst.