ACLU Study: Los Angeles Death Penalty Discriminates Against Defendants of Color and the Poor

A new study of the use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Los Angeles has con­clud­ed that, through­out the admin­is­tra­tion of District Attorney Jackie Lacey (pic­tured) the death penal­ty has ​“discriminate[d] on the basis of race and against the poor.” The study, released June 18, 2019 by the ACLU, report­ed that under Lacey’s admin­is­tra­tion the Los Angeles death penal­ty has been imposed exclu­sive­ly against defen­dants of col­or, dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly for killings of white vic­tims, and dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly in cas­es han­dled by the worst defense lawyers. In a state­ment accom­pa­ny­ing the release of the study, ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project direc­tor Cassandra Stubbs said ​“L.A. County is an exam­ple of every­thing wrong with the death penal­ty. Abysmal defense lawyer­ing, geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties and racial bias are the lega­cy of Los Angeles’ unfair and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry use of the death penalty.”

The report also faults Lacey for dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly seek­ing the death penal­ty in cas­es involv­ing white vic­tims. Although his­tor­i­cal­ly only 12% of homi­cide vic­tims in Los Angeles coun­ty are white, 36% of the cas­es in Lacey’s tenure in which death sen­tences have been imposed had white vic­tims. ​“The per­ni­cious role of racial bias is not new to the oper­a­tion of the death penal­ty in Los Angeles, or California as a whole,” the report says. ​“Study after study has found dis­crim­i­na­tion in police and pros­e­cu­tor charg­ing prac­tices, and in the impo­si­tion of the death penalty.”

Similar racial­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate sen­tenc­ing pat­terns have been observed in oth­er major urban areas in the United States. In Harris County (Houston), Texas—sec­ond only to Los Angeles in the size of its death row — 18 of the last 19 death sen­tences dat­ing back to 2004 have been imposed on defen­dants of col­or, and the sole white defen­dant sen­tenced to death was a for­eign nation­al from the Middle East. In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—which had the third largest coun­ty death row at the time of DPIC’s 2013 report, The 2% Death Penalty—44 of the last 46 defen­dants sen­tenced to death have been peo­ple of color. 

The report also crit­i­cized what it described as ​“abysmal lawyer­ing” by defense coun­sel in many of the cas­es in which a death sen­tence was imposed. A major­i­ty of cap­i­tal defen­dants in Los Angeles are rep­re­sent­ed by a spe­cial homi­cide defense unit in the pub­lic defend­ers office but, the report said, “[t]he vast major­i­ty” of the cas­es in which a death sen­tence was imposed (19 of 22) ​“were han­dled by pri­vate appoint­ed or retained lawyers.” In more than a third of the cas­es, ​“defen­dants … were rep­re­sent­ed by coun­sel who had pri­or or sub­se­quent seri­ous mis­con­duct charges,” includ­ing five cas­es in which coun­sel had been or lat­er were sus­pend­ed or dis­barred, two cas­es in which the lawyer had been placed on pro­ba­tion mul­ti­ple times, and a case in which the lawyer cur­rent­ly faces mul­ti­ple bar charges. In still anoth­er case, the report said, ​“defense coun­sel waived open­ing state­ments … and put on no defense at all in the guilt phase” and ​“repeat­ed­ly fell asleep dur­ing the guilt and penal­ty phas­es” of the tri­al. “[A]ll too often,” the report said, the death penal­ty has been ​“hand­ed down to those with the worst lawyers.” 

During the Lacey admin­is­tra­tion, the report says, Los Angeles County — whose death row of 222 pris­on­ers is larg­er than the death rows of all but three states (California, Texas, and Florida) — has con­tin­ued to impose death sen­tences out of pro­por­tion to the rest of the coun­try. The report notes that Los Angeles was ​“one of only three coun­ties nation­wide to have more than 10 death sen­tences” in the five-year peri­od from 2014 – 2018 and one of only four coun­ties nation­wide to impose more than one new death sen­tence in 2018. In that same five-year span, the coun­ty imposed more death sen­tences per capi­ta than 53 of California’s 58 coun­ties and ​“more death sen­tences per capi­ta than any large coun­ty in Texas, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington, or Georgia.” 

Lacey did not respond direct­ly to the report, but issued a state­ment say­ing ​“California vot­ers have twice failed to abol­ish the death penal­ty. … I will fol­low the law as pre­scribed by the cit­i­zens of California – whether that is seek­ing the death penal­ty for the most heinous crimes or, with the abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty, life without parole.”