Black-Led Organizations Oppose New Death Penalty Legislation, Citing Disproportionate Effect on Communities of Color

Black-led orga­ni­za­tions are oppos­ing leg­isla­tive efforts in sev­er­al states to rein­tro­duce or expand use of the death penal­ty. Lawmakers in Illinois and New Jersey have intro­duced leg­is­la­tion to rein­state the death penal­ty, while oth­er leg­is­la­tors in Tennessee and Florida have pro­posed bills which would increase its use. Tennessee Senate Bill 1112 would require an exe­cu­tion to be car­ried out with­in 30 days of sen­tenc­ing. Governor DeSantis recent­ly signed leg­is­la­tion that nul­li­fied jury una­nim­i­ty by requir­ing only eight jurors to rec­om­mend a death sen­tence, and Senate Bill 1342 would pre­vent a Florida judge from reduc­ing a jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion for death sen­tence to life imprisonment.

In an arti­cle pub­lished in The Hill, Jamila Hodge (pic­tured, left), Executive Director of Equal Justice USA, said ​“If the death penal­ty is rein­stat­ed, or if we start see­ing it applied more, we can expect it’s going to be applied in a dis­pro­por­tion­ate way and that those are the same racial dis­par­i­ties that we have seen over years. My con­cern is [the num­ber of defen­dants of col­or sen­tenced to death] may even increase because the rhetoric late­ly has been so much stronger. We have to know that if we’re going to pun­ish more, that it’s going to be dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly borne by Black and Brown communities.”

In addi­tion to oppos­ing the death penal­ty, Black-led orga­ni­za­tions such as Equal Justice USA and REFORM are work­ing to address the sys­temic inequities that affect many com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, includ­ing pover­ty, lack of oppor­tu­ni­ty, and inac­ces­si­bil­i­ty to men­tal health resources. Robert Rooks (pic­tured, right), Chief Executive Officer of REFORM, stat­ed, ​“There are many rea­sons why some­one ends up in a crim­i­nal jus­tice system…something hap­pened, broke down. They are deal­ing with per­haps sub­stance abuse, men­tal health issues, or frankly, they could be poor and not have a place to stay. I think you not only just help the indi­vid­ual, but you help the com­mu­ni­ty when you find out what those root caus­es are and then you start work­ing to address them.”