Death Penalty Data

This webpage aims to bring together all of the datasets examined in the death penalty literature - or at least all of those to which researchers have willingly given me access. You should be able to use these data to replicate the existing estimates in these papers. The goal is simply to make it easier for interested scholars to examine the data and do research in this area.

The datasets posted here are by permission of the authors of the relevant studies, and it is them, not me, who deserve your thanks. Equally, the data are not always well documented; please do not ask me for details of underlying data sources, but rather attempt to figure it out from the accompanying papers most of which document sources in the paper or data appendix. I have posted the data here in the form that the original authors provided them to me in. (For many of these papers, Donohue and Wolfers provide alternative code to replicate the original results.)

And if you have your own datasets that you would like me to share here, please send me an email, and I will willingly add relevant data.

Sunstein and Wolfers

A Death Penalty Puzzle (html)

by Cass Sunstein and Justin Wolfers

Washington Post, June 30, 2008

A simple document listing all of our background sources, and showing relevant data.

Donohue and Wolfers

Uses and Abuses of Empirical Evidence in the Death Penalty Debate

by John J. Donohue and Justin Wolfers

Stanford Law Review (2005) 58:791-846

National time series of execution and homicide rates in the U.S. (Figure 1): Stata 9 data, Figure 1 do file
National time series of homicide rates in Canada and the U.S. (Figure 2): Excel spreadsheet and Figure 2
Homicide rates by state, 1960-2000 and coding of death penalty statutes: Stata 9 data, Table 1 do file, Figure 3 do file
State-level homicide and execution data plus controls, 1934-2000: Stata 9 data, Table 2 do file, Table 3 do file, Figure 4 do file, Table 5 do file, Figure 8 do file, Table 4 do file
State-level homicide and execution data plus controls, 1977-1997: Raw data are available from Naci Mocan; Table 6 do file
Monthly homicide data in Illinois and the US (seasonally-adjusted) 1994-2003: Stata 9 data, Figure 5 do file
Monthly homicide data in Texas and the US (seasonally-adjusted) 1989-1998: Stata 9 data, Figure 6 do file
County-level homicide and execution data plus controls, 1977-1996: Stata 9 data, Table 7 do file, Table 8 do file, Table 9 do file, Figure 7 do file
Meta-analysis of published results: Stata 9 data, Figure 9 do file, Figure 10 do file

All of the Donohue and Wolfers data in one zip file. (Mocan and Gittings' refused to make allow me to republish their data, but say they will make it available to interested users.)