POWER AND PREJUDICE (Methodology)

To complete its analysis, MLK50 relied on a list originally compiled by Ed Miller Jr., a Tennessee attorney who reviewed every first-degree murder conviction in Tennessee between 1977 and 2017. Miller’s list can be found in the appendix of an article titled “Tennessee’s Death Penalty Lottery.”
 Here’s how we used Miller’s data:

Step 1: Create a list of children convicted of first-degree murder

Miller collected the date of birth and offense date of each person convicted of first-degree murder in Tennessee. MLK50 used this information to create a smaller list of every person convicted of first-degree murder for an offense committed as a child. In this methodology, a child means a person under 18.

We limited our inquiry to convictions that happened during or after 1995. This gave us a list of children convicted of first-degree murder from 1995 through 2017.

We added two years of data through information supplied by Erica Duggan at the Choosing Justice Initiative in Nashville.

Step 2: Determine whether children were convicted of felony murder or not

Once we obtained a list of children convicted of first-degree murder, we sorted each child into two categories: convicted of felony murder and not convicted of felony murder.

To do this, we obtained publicly available records in each case. These were documents from appeals or original case files. Generally, these records clearly stated whether a child had been convicted of felony murder, premeditated murder, or both. In this analysis, we include both children convicted only of felony murder and children convicted of felony murder and premeditated murder for the same offense.

Eventually, MLK50 created a list of children convicted of felony murder between 1995 and 2019. We received fact-checking assistance from Eliza Fawcett from the Felony Murder Reporting Project and Erica Duggan. 

Step 3: Ask more questions

We analyzed the publicly available files to determine the child’s race, county of conviction, and their role in the felony that led to their conviction.

The following questions are the basis for this part of the analysis:

• What is their race?
• At what age did they commit this crime?
• In which county were they convicted?
• What were their underlying felony charges?
• Were they convicted under the theory that they, personally, killed someone?
• Was someone else identified as the killer?
• Were they convicted under the theory that they intended for someone to die?
• Did anyone else assist in the commission of the underlying felony?