The death penalty remains one of the most controversial issues of criminal punishment not only because of racial/ethnic disparities, wrongful convictions, and inadequate defense representation but also because of the potential for geographic arbitrariness. The key empirical proposition embedded in the concept of geographic arbitrariness is that localities react to legally and procedurally equal capital cases in much different ways. This study assesses whether this key proposition is observed. We use data on 880 capital murder cases, nested in 18 counties in Pennsylvania from 2000 to 2010, to examine between‐county differences in (a) prosecutors’ filing of specific aggravating circumstances, (b) prosecutors’ filings to seek the death penalty, (c) prosecutors’ decisions to retract a death filing, and (d) court (judges’ or juries’) decisions to impose the death penalty. First, we found that counties differed substantially in their decisions connected to the same statutory aggravators and murder characteristics. Second, propensity score weighting models demonstrated meaningful and sometimes huge differences between specific counties in prosecutorial decisions to file to seek the death penalty, and to retract those filings. We also found meaningful differences in the likelihood of defendants being sentenced to death across counties, although differences were not as large as those for the prosecutorial decisions. Little evidence exists that county partisan composition accounts for differences between counties in death penalty outcomes, and some limited evidence points to county size as a factor that shapes death penalty outcomes. Overall, however, results point to the idiosyncrasy of specific counties in their likelihood of exposing and sentencing defendants to the death penalty.

中文翻译：

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地域的专横性？宾夕法尼亚州县法院对死刑的起诉和量刑的变化

死刑仍然是最有争议的刑事处罚问题之一，这不仅是因为种族/种族差异，错误的定罪和辩护代表不充分，还因为潜在的地域任意性。嵌入到地理任意性概念中的关键经验命题是，地方对法律和程序上均等的资本案件的反应大不相同。这项研究评估是否遵守了这一关键主张。我们使用了2000年至2010年在宾夕法尼亚州18个县中筑巢的880起死刑案件的数据，研究了（a）检察官针对具体加重情节的起诉，（b）检察官为寻求死刑的起诉， （c）检察官决定撤回死亡申请，（d）法院（法官或陪审团）作出死刑的决定。首先，我们发现各县在涉及相同法定加重者和谋杀特征的决定上存在很大差异。第二，倾向得分加权模型表明，特定县之间在检举决定判处死刑和撤回死刑申请的决策中存在着有意义的差异，有时甚至存在巨大差异。我们还发现在各县之间被告被判死刑的可能性方面存在有意义的差异，尽管差异不像检察官决定那么大。几乎没有证据表明县级党派组成可以解释各县之间死刑结果之间的差异，而有限的证据表明县的规模是影响死刑结果的一个因素。总体，