New Study Finds Evidence of Racial Bias in California Death Sentences As Resentencings Begin in Cases Tainted by Discriminatory Jury Selection

As Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price seeks to rem­e­dy her office’s his­to­ry of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry jury selec­tion, an study pub­lished in the 2024 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies by Catherine M. Grosso, Jeffrey Fagan, and Michael Laurence finds empir­i­cal evi­dence that the race of the defen­dant and the race of the vic­tim affect the like­li­hood of a death sen­tence being imposed in California. 

“The Influence of the race of defen­dant and the race of vic­tim on cap­i­tal charg­ing and sen­tenc­ing in California” exam­ined 27,000 California mur­der and manslaugh­ter cas­es between 1978 and 2002 (a time­frame that cov­ers about 75% of per­sons on California’s death row) and finds that ​“Black and Latin[a/o] defen­dants and all defen­dants con­vict­ed of killing at least one white vic­tim are sub­stan­tial­ly more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death.” The report also finds that ​“pros­e­cu­tors were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to seek death against defen­dants who kill white vic­tims [and] juries were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to sen­tence those defen­dants to death.”

The authors tie the racial dis­par­i­ties to California’s expan­sive def­i­n­i­tion of death-eli­gi­bil­i­ty. They write, ​“The mag­ni­tude of the race of the defen­dant and race of the vic­tim effects is sub­stan­tial­ly high­er than in pri­or stud­ies in oth­er states and in sin­gle-juris­dic­tion research. The results show an entrenched pat­tern of racial dis­par­i­ties in charg­ing and sen­tenc­ing that priv­i­leges white vic­tim cas­es, as well as pat­terns of racial dis­par­i­ties in who is charged and sen­tenced to death in California courts that are the nat­ur­al result of California’s capa­cious statu­to­ry def­i­n­i­tion of death eli­gi­bil­i­ty, which per­mits vir­tu­al­ly unlim­it­ed dis­cre­tion for charg­ing and sentencing decisions.” 

The study comes at a key time as California seeks to reck­on with dis­crim­i­na­tion in its death penal­ty sys­tem. In April 2024, Alameda County’s District Attorney was ordered by a fed­er­al judge to review 35 death penal­ty con­vic­tions after the dis­clo­sure of evi­dence that sev­er­al pros­e­cu­tors inten­tion­al­ly exclud­ed Black and Jewish peo­ple from serv­ing on a cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al in 1995. DA Price has since request­ed three resen­tenc­ing hear­ings for death row pris­on­ers affect­ed by that exclu­sion. The first of those hear­ings began on July 17. The state leg­is­la­ture also recent­ly passed the California Racial Justice Act (RJA), which that the ​“state shall not seek or obtain a crim­i­nal con­vic­tion or seek, obtain, or impose a sen­tence on the basis of race, eth­nic­i­ty, or nation­al ori­gin.” In addi­tion to ani­mus or bias show­cased dur­ing legal pro­ceed­ings, the RJA opens a path for redress if ​“a longer or more severe sen­tence was imposed on the defen­dant when com­pared to oth­er indi­vid­u­als con­vict­ed of the same offense, and longer or more severe sen­tences were more fre­quent­ly imposed for that offense on peo­ple that share the defendant’s race.” In 2022, the RJA was expand­ed to apply to peo­ple pre­vi­ous­ly con­vict­ed of felonies, includ­ing every­one on California’s death row. The RJA specif­i­cal­ly allows for pris­on­ers to chal­lenge their sen­tences using statistical evidence.

Since March 13^th, 2019, California has had a guber­na­to­r­i­al hold on exe­cu­tions (along with five oth­er states). Governor Gavin Newsom affirmed that no exe­cu­tion will occur in the state dur­ing his tenure. The last exe­cu­tion in California took place in 2006.