A handful of US counties drive most executions through prosecutor discretion.

Evidence

Only states can actually carry out executions, but county district attorneys can decide to request the death penalty. Fifteen counties in the Midwest and Southwest—fewer than 1% of the U.S. total—account for almost one third of all executions since 1976 (Top 15 counties by execution, 2013). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1839

Categorization

• QUESTION: Bandura himself flags that these numbers need controls for county population size and prosecutor ideology — worth chasing the underlying study.
• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on prosecutorial discretion and mass incarceration disparities, e.g. work on local prosecutors and plea bargaining.