Race

Use of the death penalty has always reflected racial bias: the data show that who is prosecuted, sentenced, and executed depends heavily on race.

In This Section:

80% Four-fifths of those exe­cut­ed and near­ly two-thirds of those sen­tenced to death were con­vict­ed of crimes involv­ing white victims.
90% Since Roper v. Simmons (2005), nine out of ten death sen­tences giv­en to 18 to 20-year-olds in California were imposed on peo­ple of color.
100% ​“No mat­ter how the data was ana­lyzed, the race of the vic­tim always emerged as an impor­tant fac­tor in who received the death penalty.” 

Dr. Isaac Unah

Overview

Race has always played a pow­er­ful role in the American death penal­ty sys­tem. From the ear­li­est uses of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment today, racial bias has con­tin­ued to cre­ate crit­i­cal gaps in fair­ness and justice. 

Historically there have been sig­nif­i­cant sen­tenc­ing dis­par­i­ties in death penal­ty cas­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly when con­sid­er­ing the race of the vic­tim and the defen­dant. For many years, rape was a cap­i­tal crime, and a strong racial bias was evi­dent in these cas­es. In the first half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, near­ly 9 in 10 exe­cu­tions were for Black men accused of assault­ing white women. 

Race of vic­tim pat­terns per­sist for all cap­i­tal crimes. Dozens of in-depth stud­ies over the past 40 years have found a con­sis­tent trend: defen­dants are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to face the death penal­ty if the vic­tim was white, even when con­trol­ling for fac­tors such as the sever­i­ty of the crime or the num­ber of vic­tims. Today, three-quar­ters of death sen­tences involve white vic­tims, even though about half of homi­cide vic­tims in the U.S. are Black. 

DPI tracks and ana­lyzes racial data in cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment cas­es, doc­u­ment­ing how race influ­ences who is sen­tenced to death and how the death penal­ty is applied across the United States. DPI also pub­lish­es research, stud­ies, and reports that exam­ine these dis­par­i­ties, both from a his­tor­i­cal per­spec­tive and with­in the con­text of the mod­ern justice system. 

Racial Justice Reports Read DPI’s Racial Justice Reports
News Articles Read DPI’s Articles about Race and the Death Penalty
Vignette Relentless Determined Effort: Racial Bias in Jury Selection Curtis Flowers spent more than two decades on death row, tried six times by a Mississippi pros­e­cu­tor who exclud­ed near­ly every poten­tial Black juror. Read More 
Vignette
Relentless Determined Effort: Racial Bias in Jury Selection

The legal sys­tem repeat­ed­ly failed Curtis Flowers, a Black man wrong­ful­ly accused of mur­der­ing four peo­ple. Mr. Flowers endured six cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions, each of which fea­tured pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, over more than two decades before he was finally released. 

Curtis Flowers was pros­e­cut­ed for cap­i­tal mur­der six times by the same pros­e­cu­tor, Doug Evans. Two tri­als end­ed in mis­tri­als, and three con­vic­tions were over­turned due to seri­ous pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. In every tri­al, DA Evans delib­er­ate­ly and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly exclud­ed Black jurors. At Mr. Flowers’s first tri­al, DA Evans removed every Black juror to secure a con­vic­tion and death sen­tence from an all-white jury. By the sixth tri­al, he had exclud­ed a total of 41 of the 42 qual­i­fied Black prospective jurors. 

One 2018 study looked at jury selec­tion deci­sions in 225 tri­als presided over by DA Evans’ office involv­ing more than 6,700 indi­vid­u­als called for jury ser­vice between 1992 and 2017. It found that pros­e­cu­tors exer­cised peremp­to­ry strikes to exclude African Americans from jury ser­vice at near­ly 4½ times the rate at which they exclud­ed white jurors. 

“The State’s relent­less, deter­mined effort to rid the jury of Black indi­vid­u­als strong­ly suggests…the State want­ed to try Flowers before a jury with as few Black jurors as pos­si­ble, and ide­al­ly before an all white jury.” 

Justice Brett Kavanaugh

The state dropped its pros­e­cu­tion of Mr. Flowers in 2020, after the Supreme Court deci­sion reversed Mr. Flower’s con­vic­tion and ordered a new trial. 

Mr. Flowers spent near­ly 24 years in con­fine­ment, most of it in soli­tary on death row. 

  • Colonial Era
  • 1619 – 1865
  • 1865 – 1890s
  • 1890s-1950
  • 2020
  • 1976-Present
Executions and Race in America
Colonial Era
Executions As Tool of Suppression Against Indigenous Peoples

Before the for­ma­tion of the United States, colo­nial gov­ern­ments used exe­cu­tions to sup­press Indigenous resis­tance. Native lead­ers were exe­cut­ed or assas­si­nat­ed for fight­ing back against land theft and set­tler expan­sion. Colonial and ear­ly U.S. laws crim­i­nal­ized Indigenous self-defense, often under mil­i­tary law. On December 26, 1862, the U.S. gov­ern­ment hanged 38 Dakota men in Mankato, Minnesota. Ordered by President Abraham Lincoln, it remains the largest mass exe­cu­tion in U.S. his­to­ry. A total of 392 Dakota pris­on­ers were tried and 303 were sen­tenced to death, often with­out due process or legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and some con­vic­tions were reached in under five min­utes. After review­ing the cas­es, President Lincoln ​“ordered a care­ful exam­i­na­tion of the records of the tri­als to be made” and reduced the num­ber of exe­cu­tions to 38. However, these killings were part of a broad­er cam­paign to forcibly remove and kill Native peo­ple to secure land for white settlers.

Executions and Race in America
1619 – 1865
Executions as a Tool of Enslavement

Capital pun­ish­ment served as a legal exten­sion of slave dis­ci­pline. Enslaved Africans were rou­tine­ly pub­licly exe­cut­ed and often with­out tri­al for rebel­lion, escape, or sim­ply dis­obe­di­ence. Laws allowed slave­own­ers to kill enslaved peo­ple with impunity. 

Executions and Race in America
1865 – 1890s
Executions of Formerly Enslaved Individuals During Reconstruction

After slav­ery end­ed, Southern states passed Black Codes: laws designed to crim­i­nal­ize Black exis­tence. Many crimes new­ly pun­ish­able by death were only applied to Black peo­ple. These laws and the dis­pro­por­tion­ate exe­cu­tions of Black peo­ple main­tained the eco­nom­ic and social con­trol once imposed by slavery. 

Executions and Race in America
1890s-1950
Legal Executions During the Jim Crow Era

In the imme­di­ate after­math of Reconstruction, between 1877 and 1950 over 4,000 Black peo­ple were lynched in the U.S., most­ly in the South and often by white mobs. In the 1930s, as mob lynch­ings began to recede in the face of ris­ing crit­i­cism, pub­lic lynch­ing moved to pri­vate state exe­cu­tions. Many Black defen­dants were exe­cut­ed by the state with­out fair tri­als, due process, or ade­quate defense representation.

Executions and Race in America
2020
Notable Case: Lezmond Mitchell

Lezmond Mitchell​’s exe­cu­tion was the first fed­er­al exe­cu­tion of a Native American in the mod­ern era. Mr. Mitchell, a mem­ber of the Navajo Nation, was exe­cut­ed in 2020 for a crime com­mit­ted on trib­al land against trib­al mem­bers. The Navajo Nation strong­ly opposed his exe­cu­tion, cit­ing tra­di­tion­al beliefs that reject cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The fed­er­al gov­ern­ment ignored trib­al sov­er­eign­ty by pros­e­cut­ing him, mir­ror­ing a his­tor­i­cal pat­tern, and President Trump denied all requests for clemency. 

Executions and Race in America
1976-Present

Data show an over­lap between his­toric lynch­ings in for­mer slave­hold­ing states and mod­ern-day exe­cu­tions. States that once relied heav­i­ly on racial ter­ror through lynch­ing are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly the same states that car­ry out executions today.