Success Rate Low in Death Penalty Cases

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By Chelsea Kopta

Summary

Prosecutors have yet to decide if the death penalty is on the table for murder suspect Phienghcai Sisouvanh, but we wanted to know, how successful are trials where capital punishment is an option?

Story Published: Jul 3, 2008 at 6:08 PM PST

KENNEWICK -- There's only one charge in the state of Washington that can put a killer to death: aggravated first degree murder.

It's what suspect Phiengchai Sisouvanh faces, accused of murdering 27-year-old mom Araceli Camacho Gomez and cutting out her unborn baby..

Prosecutors have yet to decide if the death penalty is on the table, but we wanted to know, how successful are trials where capital punishment is an option?

"I just wanted to kill, it didn't matter who."

Those were the words of Benton County triple-murderer Jeremy Sagastagui, put to death by lethal injection in 1998.

It's the only death penalty case in the last 25 years in the county. And one of only four in the state recently.

Though Sagastagui was executed, the majority of death sentences have been reversed.

Action News pulled the numbers from a 2007 report by the Washington State Bar Association.

As of last year, there were 254 cases where the death penalty was an option.

Of those cases, prosecutors went for the death penalty in 79 cases.

Of those 79, a jury sentenced 30 killers to death.

And of those 30, 19 were reversed.

Seven are still pending.

Only four were executed.

Each of the 19 cases included a lengthy appeals process. The most recent numbers included a seven-year average.

And lengthy appeals can create errors. According to the report, errors ranged from a mistake by the judge to a mistake by the jury.

Two cases were the product of constitutional error, nine cases judicial error, another two cases were the result of prosecutor misconduct, five cases ineffective defense council and one case was due to jury misconduct.

Rather than the death penalty, all of these killers got a life sentence without parole instead. It's the only other option for an aggravated murder conviction.

Of those who have been executed, three of the four chose not to appeal. The report states, Sagastegui was one of those people.

It means, prosecutors calling for a death sentence are successful just 25-percent of the time.

We also pulled the numbers for you from Franklin County.

In the last 25 years, the county had two killers who could have faced the death penalty. Prosecutors only pushed for it in one time. and it was never imposed.

And we should mention, a death sentence is not an option if the killer is a juvenile or deemed mentally ill.