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Is a rational, fair scheme, consistent with the principles of equality of justice, discernible in the commutation of death sentences?Or does a selective system appear to operate, differentiating between.the executed and commuted upon improper bases?With these questions in mind, the authors have studied the case records of 439 persons sentenced to death for first degree murder and detained on death row in Pennsylvania between 1914 and 1958.How did the case records of those whose sentences were commuted differ from the case records of those who died in the electric chair?In this article, the authors present the differences in terms of type of murder committed, age, race, nativity, occupation, marital status, type of counsel, and other relevant factors; evaluate the statistically significant differences; and discuss the implications of their findings.-EmToR BASIS FOR THE STUDYThe purpose of this study is to analyze statistically the social characteristics of those persons who have been sentenced to death for the crime of murder since introduction of the electric chair in Pennsylvania.The basic data consist of the case records of 439 persons sentenced to death for first degree murder' and detained under custody on death row between 1914 and 1958.2These I "All murder which shall be perpetrated by means of poison, or by lying in wait, or by any other kind of wilful, deliberate and premeditated killing, or which shall be committed in the perpetration of, or attempting to perpetrate any arson, rape, robbery, burglary, or kidnapping, shall be murder in the first degree."PA.P .CODE art.XII, §701.The first statute to divide the crime of murder into degrees was enacted in Pennsylvania on April 22, 1794.Many other states of the union adopted this model with slight changes in the substantive law but with considerable variations in judicial interpretations, See, e.g.,
Wolfgang et al. (Sat,) studied this question.