Tomorrow, the Death Penalty Information Center will release a report that doc­u­ments how racial bias and vio­lence affect­ed the past use of the death penal­ty in Missouri and how that his­to­ry con­tin­ues to influ­ence the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the state. Compromised Justice: How A Legacy of Racial Violence Informs Missouri’s Death Penalty Today, sched­uled for release on December 1, 2023, notes that his­tor­i­cal­ly and into the present day, Missouri’s death penal­ty has been applied dis­crim­i­na­to­ri­ly based on race. 

The report explains that before Missouri gained state­hood in 1821, the ter­ri­to­ry adopt­ed laws that stip­u­lat­ed that cer­tain crimes could only be tried cap­i­tal­ly if com­mit­ted by an enslaved per­son. Even after gain­ing state­hood and adopt­ing super­fi­cial­ly race-neu­tral cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment laws, the death penal­ty con­tin­ued to be applied dis­crim­i­na­to­ri­ly. Before the end of slav­ery in 1865, enslaved peo­ple were four times more like­ly to be exe­cut­ed than white Missourians. 

Missouri also has a long his­to­ry of ter­ror­iz­ing Black com­mu­ni­ties. As Compromised Justice explains, the first doc­u­ment­ed lynch­ing in U.S. his­to­ry hap­pened in Missouri in 1838, and through­out the 19th and 20th cen­turies, at least 60 Black Missourians were killed in lynch­ings. This makes it the state with the sec­ond high­est num­ber of racial ter­ror lynch­ings out­side of the South. Missouri also retained pub­lic exe­cu­tions longer than most oth­er states, which served as anoth­er avenue for threat­en­ing and intim­i­dat­ing Black Missourians. There are exam­ples of sher­iffs hand­ing out sou­venirs — rang­ing from rope to sev­ered heads — to those who attend­ed pub­lic exe­cu­tions, a prac­tice com­mon­ly seen with lynchings. 

DPIC’s review of mod­ern death sen­tenc­ing sta­tis­tics reveal a con­tin­ued empha­sis on race in Missouri’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. One of the most clear and per­sis­tent racial dis­par­i­ties in death sen­tenc­ing con­cerns the over­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of white vic­tims among cas­es result­ing in a death sen­tence. Of all death sen­tences imposed in Missouri since 1972, 80% have involved white vic­tims, even though white vic­tims make up rough­ly 36% of homi­cide vic­tims in the state. Additionally, stud­ies have found that homi­cides involv­ing white vic­tims are sev­en times more like­ly to result in an exe­cu­tion than those with Black vic­tims. The over­rep­re­sen­ta­tion of white vic­tim cas­es is rem­i­nis­cent of trends seen in the 19th and 20th cen­tu­ry when Black peo­ple could be lynched or sen­tenced to death based on flim­sy evi­dence if they were accused of harm­ing a white person. 

“Nothing can change the fact that racial vio­lence and dis­crim­i­na­tion are part of Missouri’s his­to­ry. But study­ing the past can help us under­stand why racial dis­par­i­ties con­tin­ue today, espe­cial­ly in our death penal­ty sys­tem, and inform future deci­sions,” said Tiana Herring, DPIC’s Data Storyteller and the lead author of the report. 

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