[Written for Journalism 230 Media Reporting Class, September 2015]

KNOXVILLE, Tenn.— Dr. John Scheb and Dr. Hemant Sharma, political science professors at the University of Tennessee, presented their statistical findings on the use of the death penalty in Tennessee on Thursday, Sept. 17 in the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy.

The professors began the lecture with background information from court cases involving the death penalty, including the 1972 case “Furman v. Georgia.” Tennessee reinstated this policy after “Furman v. Georgia,” becoming one of the 31 states to allow capital punishment.

“As time goes by the death penalty is used less and less,” Scheb said. “There have been only six executions since it was reinstated in this state.”

Before creating their own model, Scheb and Sharma looked at statistics from the state in recent years to compare it to their own results. They found that of the 27 percent of cases where the death penalty was sought, 12 percent were actually sentenced to death.

Scheb and Sharma also looked at the race of the victims and defendants and the probability of a guilty verdict.

“While there are some exceptions, juries are more likely to rule death sentences in cases where the victims are white,” Scheb said.

The professors used Rule 12 forms to collect data about murders committed in Tennessee. They looked at forms from 1977 through 2014 and focused on both prosecutors’ decisions to seek the death penalty and decisions of jury members to rule in favor of capital punishment.

While the data set had over 250 variables, Scheb and Sharma focused primarily on the traits of the victim, the traits of the defendant, the nature of the crime and the evidence factors.

In Tennessee, the race of the defendant was not as significant as other factors such as the nature of the crime, familiar witness identifications and presence of a confession.

“There is no evidence of discrimination of black defendants when they’ve committed the same crime as a white defendant,” Sharma said.

The data collected found that prosecutors are most likely to seek the death penalty when there are three or more victims. Abnormal killings and the murder of a law officer were the second most powerful variables for a death sentence.

“Abnormal killings include stabbing, beating and strangling,” Sharma said. “They reserve the death penalty for the most egregious crimes.”

There were some similarities when comparing jury decisions for the death penalty and the decisions of prosecutors to seek capital punishment. Jurors also did not find race to be the most important factor when convicting a defendant. Scheb said this might be because juries are becoming more diverse, which would result in less discrimination

Jurors were 4.2 times more likely to rule in favor of the death penalty when scientific evidence was present.

“That’s a positive finding for the idea of capital punishment in Tennessee,” Sharma said. “Jurors are taking evidence into account.”

“When they know a person is going to get the death penalty they want a higher level of certainty with the guilt of the accused,” added Scheb.

Tennessee uses lethal injection as a means of execution, which is the most common method in the United States. The state also brought back the use of the electric chair in 2014 in cases where drugs for lethal injection are not available, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.