The exclusion of jurors opposed to the death penalty, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote in a 1986 dissent, "allows the state a special advantage in those prosecutions where the charges are most serious and the possible punishments the most severe".
The Justice Department doesn't keep a tally of convictions in those prosecutions, but its website says federal lawyers secured five convictions and 55 guilty please between 2008 and April 2013.
In addition, those prosecutions that are started are much more likely to be resolved with, for example, a caution than would have been the case 10 years ago".
In that way, those prosecutions and the rhetoric around them perform valuable propaganda work for the Islamic State, at no cost, while serving law enforcement's self-justifying agenda.
Even in those countries, prosecutions are rare or nonexistent, said Neela Ghoshal, a researcher at Human Rights Watch.
They've won convictions at an impressive rate in those civilian prosecutions.
But even in those countries, prosecutions are rare or nonexistent, said Neela Ghoshal, a researcher in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights programme at Human Rights Watch.
Most of those prosecutions occurred in 2004.
Those prosecutions, however, rarely result in convictions, according to the data from the clerk's office.
Serbia, the dominant republic in Yugoslavia, is under heavy Western pressure to cooperate in the prosecution of those charged with war crimes.
Its raw figures are second-hand, unreliable and not comparable from country to country, says Neil Howard of the European University Institute in Florence; those for prosecutions, for example, refer to quite different laws in different places.
