Editorial: Stats from study just don’t figure

Thursday, Sept. 21, 2000 | 9:51 a.m.

A highly acclaimed study released in June declared that Nevada had the highest death-penalty rate in the nation. "The numbers speak for themselves. The system is not successful," said James Liebman, who led the Columbia University team that conducted the survey. Well, not quite. A Nevada attorney general office's analysis of Liebman's study shows that the statistics, which he used to arrive at his conclusion about Nevada's record, often don't add up.

The attorney general's office contended that Liebman's errors run the gamut, from failing to account for eight men who were executed since 1997, listing incorrect case outcomes, using different time frames for the study and relying heavily on statistics supplied by defense attorneys, who didn't include all death-penalty cases. In one specific instance cited by Dorothy Nash Holmes, the capital case coordinator for the attorney general's office, Liebman claimed that Nevada has 28.23 death sentences for every 1,000 inmates. But this number didn't pan out. Liebman's ratio, according to Holmes, would mean that there are 268 inmates on death row, but Nevada actually has 88 inmates on death row.

While Liebman received a well-deserved rebuke for his incomplete research, it also should be noted that Holmes herself engaged in the selective use of statistics in making a reference to the death penalty's impact on minorities. For example, Holmes noted that of the 50 men executed in Nevada since 1905, 42 were white, four were Native-Americans, two were black and two were Asian. While that is correct, Holmes neglects to mention -- as the Sun's Cy Ryan pointed out in a Wednesday story -- that nearly a majority of those currently on death row do represent racial minorities: there are 45 whites on death row, 34 blacks, six Hispanics and one Cuban. Without a doubt there have been serious and legitimate concerns recently raised as to whether innocent people have been sentenced to death elsewhere in the nation. Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a conservative Republic an, even went so far as to place a moratorium on executions in his state after it was discovered that a number of innocent ! men had been sentenced to death. Unlike the previous decade, when there was virtually no debate over the morality and fairness of the death penalty, there now is a robust dialogue over whether a timeout should be called. As the debate is once again engaged, opponents and supporters of capital punishment have a responsibility to ensure that they aren't sloppy or manipulating statistics to buttress their positions. The stakes are too high.