New DPIC analysis of execution “volunteers”

The Death Penalty Information Center has this “New Analysis” titled “Death-Sentenced Prisoners ​’Volunteer’ for Execution at Ten Times Civilian Suicide Rate.” Here are some excerpts from the start of the lengthy piece:

Derrick Dearman first told his mother that he wanted to die when he was four years old.  On October 17, he was executed by the state of Alabama, becoming the 20th person executed in the United States this year and the 165th in the modern era to “volunteer” for death.  A new analysis by the Death Penalty Information Center shows that despite falling rates of death sentences, executions, and public support for the death penalty, the number of death-sentenced prisoners waiving their appeals and choosing execution remains high — ten times higher than suicide rates among the general public.  An estimated one in ten modern executions are the result of the prisoner’s choice.  Given that the legal bar for “competence” to waive capital appeals is extremely low, scores of people have been executed on their own request despite evidence of severe mental illness and other serious constitutional concerns about their convictions and death sentences….

In 2005, Cornell Law School Professor John Blume published a seminal study on volunteers titled “Killing the Willing: ‘Volunteers,’ Suicide, and Competency.”  In an analysis of volunteers from 1977-2003, he found that 88% had struggled with mental illness and/or substance abuse.  Volunteers did not split evenly along race or gender lines: 85% were white males, despite that group representing only 45% of those on death row. Black men represented 43% of death row but only 3% of volunteers.

DPI analyzed volunteers in the twenty years since the study and concluded that Professor Blume’s findings hold true today.  Of the 165 people executed at their own request since 1977, 87% battled mental illness, substance abuse, or both. About 46% of people sentenced to death in the modern era have been white men — but they make up 84% of volunteers.  The last ten volunteers, going back to 2016, have all been white men.  Meanwhile, 41% of modern death sentences have been imposed on Black men, but they represent only 5% of volunteers (eight total).  The difference in volunteer rates for white and Black men, compared to their death sentence rates, is strongly statistically significant. Statistics for women are somewhat more consistent: about 2% of people sentenced to death have been women of any race, and 2% of volunteers have been women (only three total, all white).