Policy Issues

Race

Racial bias against defendants of color and in favor of white victims has a strong effect on who is capitally prosecuted, sentenced to death, and executed.

DPIC Podcast: Discussions With DPIC

The Duane Buck Case: Race, Future Dangerousness, and the Death Penalty, with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s Christina Swarns

Overview

The death penalty has long come under scrutiny for being racially biased. Earlier in the twentieth century when it was applied for the crime of rape, 89 percent of the executions involved black defendants, most for the rape of a white woman. In the modern era, when executions have been carried out exclusively for murder, 75 percent of the cases involve the murder of white victims, even though about half of all homicide victims in America are black.

A bias towards white-victim cases has been found in almost all of the sophisticated studies exploring this area over many years. These studies typically control for other variables in the cases studied, such as the number of victims or the brutality of the crime, and still found that defendants were more likely to be sentenced to death if they killed a white person.

The issue of racial disparities in the use of the death penalty was considered by the Supreme Court in 1987. In a close vote, the Court held that studies alone could not provide the required proof of racial discrimination in a particular defendant’s case. This decision appeared to close the door to broad challenges to the death penalty. However, the Court has found racial discrimination in the selection of the jury in individual capital cases.
 

At Issue

Today there is growing evidence that racial bias continues in society, particularly within the criminal justice system. The existence of implicit racial bias among some law enforcement officers, witnesses, jurors, and others allows harsher punishment of minorities, even without legal sanction or intention. Although these prejudices are hard to uproot, the unfair application of the death penalty could be halted by eliminating that sentencing option altogether.

What DPIC Offers 
 

DPIC tracks the race of those on death row, those who have been executed, the victims in the underlying crime, and many related statistics. It collects the sophisticated studies on racial bias that have been published over many years. Many of DPIC’s reports focus on aspects of this question and some are devoted entirely to the issue of race.

News & Developments


News

Jun 22, 2023

DPIC Releases New Report on How the History of Racial Violence and Discrimination Have Shaped the Death Penalty in Tennessee

The Death Penalty Information Center’s new report on race and the death penal­ty in Tennessee places the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem in his­tor­i­cal con­text, doc­u­ment­ing how racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and racial vio­lence con­tin­ue to influ­ence the admin­is­tra­tion of the death penal­ty. Doomed to Repeat: The Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty, released June 22, 2023, notes that as the Tennessee Department of Correction devel­ops new lethal injec­tion pro­to­cols and pre­pares to resume exe­cu­tions, the state may find it use­ful to under­stand how Tennessee arrived at its cur­rent cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment system.

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News

Mar 14, 2024

North Carolina Racial Justice Act Hearing Concludes in Hasson Bacote Case

On Friday, March 8, 2024 a Johnston County tri­al court con­clud­ed a his­toric hear­ing regard­ing the claims of Hasson Bacote, a death-sen­tenced pris­on­er in North Carolina, that racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selec­tion played a role in his 2009 cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing. The case, which is being reviewed pur­suant to North Carolina’s 2009 Racial Justice Act (RJA), could have impli­ca­tions for more than 100 oth­er death row pris­on­ers who have pend­ing claims under the Act.

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News

Mar 07, 2024

Georgia Sets March 20 Execution Date for Willie Pye Despite Strong Evidence of Intellectual Disability and Previous Finding of Ineffective Representation by Attorney with History of Racial Bias

The Georgia Attorney General has announced that Willie James Pye, who pre­vi­ous­ly had his death sen­tence reversed due to his attorney’s fail­ure to inves­ti­gate his back­ground, only to see the death sen­tence rein­stat­ed on appeal, is set to be exe­cut­ed on March 20. Mr. Pye’s court-appoint­ed tri­al attor­ney, Johnny Mostiler, has been accused of inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion or racial bias in at least four cas­es involv­ing Black defen­dants and report­ed­ly called one of his own clients a lit­tle n****r.” Mr. Pye also has undis­put­ed” signs of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, with an IQ

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News

Feb 29, 2024

Black History Month Profile Series: Elaine Jones

This month, DPIC cel­e­brates Black History Month with week­ly pro­files of notable Black Americans whose work affect­ed the mod­ern death penal­ty era. The fourth and final entry in this series is lawyer and civ­il rights activist Elaine Jones, for­mer pres­i­dent and direc­tor-coun­sel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and coun­sel of record in Furman v. Georgia.

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News

Feb 28, 2024

New Report from Texas Defender Service Examines Ongoing Racial Disparities in Harris County Death Penalty Practices and Recommends Reforms

A new report from the Texas Defender Service (TDS) titled Arbitrary and Capricious: Examining Racial Disparities in Harris County’s Pursuit of Death Sentences” was pub­lished on February 22, 2024 and is the lat­est in series of TDS reports on use of the death penal­ty in Texas. The report focus­es on Harris County’s out­lier death penal­ty prac­tices, both with­in the state and nation­al­ly. While more than half of the 254 coun­ties in Texas have nev­er imposed a death sen­tence, Harris County is respon­si­ble for most of the state’s cur­rent death row…

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News

Feb 27, 2024

States’ Failure to Collect Juror Race Information Contributes to Whitewashed” Jury Box, Berkeley Law Report Finds

A new report from Berkeley Law’s Death Penalty Clinic finds that just 19 states col­lect race and eth­nic­i­ty infor­ma­tion from prospec­tive jurors, mean­ing that a major­i­ty of states can­not ensure that their juries are a rep­re­sen­ta­tive cross-sec­tion of the com­mu­ni­ty” as man­dat­ed by the Constitution. The report, Guess Who’s Coming to Jury Duty?, rec­om­mends that all states adopt a uni­form ques­tion­naire” to obtain prospec­tive jurors’ race or eth­nic­i­ty and that state courts annu­al­ly pub­lish aggre­gat­ed, anonymized race/​ethnicity data” for lit­i­gants and researchers inves­ti­gat­ing jury com­po­si­tion. The work builds on the…

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News

Feb 26, 2024

North Carolina Trial Court Will Hear New Evidence of Racial Bias in Death Row Prisoner’s Racial Justice Act Claim

Beginning February 28, 2024, a Johnston County, North Carolina, tri­al court will hear death row pris­on­er Hasson Bacote’s claims that racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selec­tion played a role in his cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing. In 2009, North Carolina passed the Racial Justice Act (RJA), which allowed death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers to chal­lenge their sen­tences if they could demon­strate that race played a role in their sen­tenc­ing and jury selec­tion. Sentenced to death in 2009 by a near­ly all-white jury, Mr. Bacote, and near­ly all oth­er death row pris­on­ers in the state, filed a claim…

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News

Feb 20, 2024

Op-Ed: Law Professor Stephen Bright Encourages SCOTUS to Review Egregious Racial Discrimination” in Georgia Death Row Prisoner’s Case

In a February 14, 2024 op-ed pub­lished in the Washington Post, the long­time defense lawyer, for­mer direc­tor of the Southern Center for Human Rights, and law pro­fes­sor Stephen Bright high­lights the con­tin­ued ille­gal exclu­sion of Black jurors in vio­la­tion of Batson v. Kennedy (1986). The op-ed titled, Struck from a jury for being Black? It still hap­pens all too often,” uses the case of Georgia death-sen­tenced pris­on­er Warren King, whose peti­tion the U.S. Supreme Court is expect­ed to review on February 23, as the lat­est exam­ple of the per­sis­tent prac­tice. The…

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News

Jan 23, 2024

United States Supreme Court Asked to Consider Another Case of Racially Biased Prosecutorial Jury Strikes

On December 18, 2023, attor­neys for Warren King, an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled black man sen­tenced to death in Georgia in 1998, filed a peti­tion for a writ of cer­tio­rari in the United States Supreme Court, ask­ing the Court to review the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals’ rul­ing deny­ing Mr. King relief. The peti­tion states that abun­dant evi­dence demon­strates that the pros­e­cu­tor dis­crim­i­nat­ed against Black and female jurors in select­ing [Mr.] King’s jury,” which vio­lates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Former Appling County pros­e­cu­tor John…

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