The Process of Federal Involvement - A recently released study conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago finds what many have long suspected: criminal justice in this country is fragmented, decentralized, reactive, and strongly influenced by local customs, traditions, and personalities. What’s more, in the words of respondents, it highlighted many of the political, personal, practical, and legal considerations that come into play regarding the decision-making processes involved in the investigation and prosecution of homicide cases. Although the research provided a great deal of context underlying the question of whether the federal death penalty could (or should) be applied with consistency in federal districts across the country, ultimately the reader was left with one question: In a country as large and diverse as the United States, is it possible to achieve uniformity in administration of the death penalty among defendants arrested for homicide on charges that might result in a sentence of death? That is, is conformity possible?

Among federal death row inmates, one common denominator throughout these cases was that every case, in some manner, involved a homicide. Funded by the National Institute of Justice, the NORC study, "Investigation and Prosecution of Homicide Cases in the U.S.: The Process of Federal Involvement," focused on the process by which some homicide cases were prosecuted in the federal courts, while others were not. The goal was twofold: (1) to identify the process by which the federal government is made aware of potentially federally relevant homicide cases within federal districts and 2) to identify the process and factors that influence the decision by U.S. attorneys to prosecute or decline homicide cases for federal prosecution.

Senior NORC researchers conducted face-to-face interviews with key criminal justice officials, including local, state, and federal investigators, prosecutors, and defense attorneys within each district included in the study. Interviews focused on the nature of the local crime problem, federal and local crime priorities, policies and procedures between federal and local authorities, perceptions of state and local jurisdiction, benefits of federal and state systems for processing cases, task forces, relationships between and among agencies, general attitudes, and case flow by offense type.

In-depth interviews with all the various parties involved in the investigation and prosecution of homicide cases, including local, state, and federal players, had never been done prior to this study. These interviews allowed the researchers to disentangle the many factors that come into play among law enforcement organizations as they go about the business of bringing a murderer to justice. Taken together, interview responses provided an "integrated explanation" of the process by which the federal government becomes involved in particular homicide cases. Although the study found no invidious racial or regional factors that contributed to disparities among federal death row inmates, it uncovered striking differences on how federally relevant homicides are investigated and prosecuted from district to district and even within districts across local jurisdictions. In particular, the study found two principal factors critical to the question of whether a homicide case will be investigated and/or prosecuted federally:

• local and federal "openness" to federal involvement in homicide cases, which are traditionally viewed as "local" crimes; and
• dynamics and interaction between local and federal criminal justice agencies.

In other words, local law enforcement must be willing to involve federal investigators in a homicide investigation and local prosecutors generally must agree to involve federal investigators and prosecutors. Similarly, federal investigators and prosecutors must be willing to assume responsibility for a homicide investigation and/or prosecution. If local or federal investigators or prosecutors are reluctant to or adamant against federal involvement, ultimate prosecution in the federal system is very unlikely. At the same time, federal involvement is much more likely to occur if relationships and trust have developed or been long-standing across local and federal agencies. For example, in one district with a large number of federal homicide prosecutions, local police and federal prosecutors had developed a close and trusting relationship, much to the exclusion of the local prosecutor’s office. On the other hand, federal investigators in another district worked together on joint task forces with local police to investigate homicide cases, even though these cases were prosecuted predominantly in the state system.