Human Rights

Race, Human Rights, and the U.S. Death Penalty

From enslave­ment to lynch­ing, race mas­sacres, the geno­cide against indige­nous peo­ples, Jim Crow seg­re­ga­tion, and immi­grant exclu­sion poli­cies, the United States has a long his­to­ry of human rights abus­es aris­ing out of racial vio­lence and discrimination. 

Following the rat­i­fi­ca­tion of the post-Civil War amend­ments to the U.S. Constitution that end­ed chat­tel slav­ery and guar­an­teed equal pro­tec­tion of the law to all Americans, and the land­mark Reconstruction Era Civil Rights Act, gov­ern­men­tal acts of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion became uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and unlaw­ful in this coun­try. While enshrined as the law of the land, those rights are often vio­lat­ed and those vio­la­tions are often not redressed by the courts. Whether deemed a vio­la­tion of domes­tic law or not, those gov­ern­men­tal acts of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion — and tol­er­a­tion of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion by non-enforce­ment of pro­hi­bi­tions against it — may vio­late inter­na­tion­al human rights law.

International Context on Race and Human Rights

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination was adopt­ed in 1965 and rat­i­fied, with reser­va­tions, by the United States in 1994. Article 2 sweep­ing­ly condemn[s] racial dis­crim­i­na­tion” and com­mits par­ties to the treaty to under­take to pur­sue by all appro­pri­ate means and with­out delay a pol­i­cy of elim­i­nat­ing racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in all its forms.” Article 2, Section 1(a) makes clear that the oblig­a­tions of the treaty extend beyond fed­er­al gov­ern­ments, com­mit­ting coun­tries to engage in no act or prac­tice of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion … and to ensure that all pub­lic author­i­ties and pub­lic insti­tu­tions, nation­al and local, shall act in con­for­mi­ty with this obligation.” 

Article 6 of the Convention requires coun­tries to assure to every­one with­in their juris­dic­tion effec­tive pro­tec­tion and reme­dies, through the com­pe­tent nation­al tri­bunals and oth­er State insti­tu­tions, against any acts of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion.” The fail­ure of Congress to pro­vide effec­tive reme­dies and the refusal of fed­er­al courts to enforce them are them­selves vio­la­tions of inter­na­tion­al human rights norms, sep­a­rate and apart from the ini­tial vio­la­tion by state or local gov­ern­ment actors.

Although the United States signed ICERD in 1966, it was not rat­i­fied by the Senate until October 1994. The Senate declared the treaty to be not self-exe­cut­ing,” mean­ing that its pro­vi­sions would be unen­force­able in U.S. courts unless Congress sep­a­rate­ly enact­ed leg­is­la­tion mak­ing it part of U.S. domes­tic law. Congress has not done so, nor has it enact­ed leg­is­la­tion that would per­mit indi­vid­u­als who believed their human rights under ICERD had been vio­lat­ed to bring suit in U.S. courts. It also refused to sub­mit dis­putes under ICERD to the juris­dic­tion of the International Court of Justice with­out the spe­cif­ic con­sent of the United States … in each case.”

According to the American Bar Association Section on Civil Rights and Social Justice, these actions nul­li­fy the treaty’s effect” and demon­strate a hol­low” and watered-down com­mit­ment … toward ICERD’s goal of elim­i­nat­ing glob­al racial discrimination.”

In recent years, inter­na­tion­al human rights bod­ies have crit­i­cized the United States for endem­ic racial dis­crim­i­na­tion through­out its crim­i­nal legal sys­tem. Following the extra­ju­di­cial killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, and dur­ing the sub­se­quent Black Lives Matter protests, the United Nations Human Rights Council called for an urgent debate in June 2020. In that ses­sion, the coun­cil dis­cussed sys­temic racism and vio­la­tions of inter­na­tion­al human rights law com­mit­ted by law enforce­ment offi­cials against Africans and peo­ple of African descent around the world, and pro­posed a trans­for­ma­tive agen­da” to end impuni­ty for human rights vio­la­tions by law enforce­ment offi­cials and … ensure that the voic­es of peo­ple of African descent and those who stand up against racism are heard and that their con­cerns are act­ed upon.” The ses­sion con­clud­ed with a res­o­lu­tion call­ing upon the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights to con­duct a thor­ough report on the matter. 

In 2021, the ground­break­ing” racial jus­tice report was released and pro­vid­ed 20 action­able rec­om­men­da­tions. Unsatisfied with the progress since, the Office of the High Commissioner released a sub­se­quent report in 2022 iden­ti­fy­ing piece­meal progress in com­bat­ing sys­temic racism.” The racial jus­tice report specif­i­cal­ly not­ed the dis­pro­por­tion­ate impact of the death penal­ty, puni­tive drug poli­cies, arrests, over­rep­re­sen­ta­tion in pris­ons and oth­er aspects of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem on peo­ple of African descent in dif­fer­ent coun­tries” and quot­ed Amnesty International’s 2021 Global Report on Death Sentences and Executions that charged that many cas­es of those who faced the death penal­ty [in the United States] in 2021 were also affect­ed by con­cerns of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion and bias.”

The 2020 United Nations Universal Periodic Review of the United States’ human rights record includes gen­er­al­ized crit­i­cism from sev­er­al UN bod­ies regard­ing the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry nature of the U.S. cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. The Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent, which had pre­vi­ous­ly expressed con­cern about the exis­tence of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 2016, not­ed that those of African descent were dis­pro­por­tion­al­ly affect­ed, cit­ing the fact that they rep­re­sent­ed over 40% of the U.S. death row pop­u­la­tion. The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention not­ed that African Americans were more like­ly to be sen­tenced to longer terms of impris­on­ment” and expressed con­cern about the exis­tence of racial dis­par­i­ties at all stages of the crim­i­nal jus­tice system.”

Evidence of Race Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty

Everywhere in the world in which the death penal­ty exists, it is applied dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly against racial­ly, reli­gious­ly, eth­ni­cal­ly, and polit­i­cal­ly dis­fa­vored groups. The United States is no excep­tion to that world­wide rule.

The United States death penal­ty is often referred to as a descen­dent of the American his­tor­i­cal prac­tices of enslave­ment, lynch­ing, and Jim Crow seg­re­ga­tion. Studies have found that states with a greater his­to­ry of lynch­ings also tend to have more mod­ern death sen­tences, and that the link is even stronger between lynch­ings and death sen­tences imposed upon Black defen­dants.[1]2022 study doc­u­ment­ed the deep his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary con­nec­tion [between the death penal­ty and] white racial hos­til­i­ty toward blacks.”[2] It found that the same racial resent­ment of blacks [that] dri­ves sup­port for the death penal­ty at the indi­vid­ual lev­el” oper­ates at the state lev­el and that states with high­er aggre­gate lev­els of racial resent­ment impose more death sen­tences,” par­tic­u­lar­ly against African Americans. From slav­ery to lynch­ing to seg­re­ga­tion to the death penal­ty and mass incar­cer­a­tion, the researchers wrote, “[r]acial atti­tudes that his­tor­i­cal­ly led to dis­crim­i­na­tion and racial sub­ju­ga­tion repro­duce them­selves with­in the white pop­u­la­tion through the insti­tu­tions and polit­i­cal cul­tures of a giv­en area.”

Studies show that racial dis­crim­i­na­tion oper­ates and com­pounds itself at each stage of a poten­tial­ly cap­i­tal case, from polic­ing prac­tices, to charg­ing deci­sions, to plea nego­ti­a­tions, and on through the process of tri­al, sen­tenc­ing, appeal, and exe­cu­tion.[3] A review of a dataset of 2,328 Georgia first-degree mur­der con­vic­tions that pro­duced 1,317 death eli­gi­ble cas­es found that two sets of fac­tors oper­at­ed in com­bi­na­tion to deter­mine who would be exe­cut­ed: vic­tim race and gen­der, and a set of case-spe­cif­ic fea­tures that are often cor­re­lat­ed with race.”[4] Indeed, Georgia data showed that racial dis­par­i­ties per­sist and … are mag­ni­fied dur­ing the appel­late and clemen­cy process­es,” with the net result that the over­all exe­cu­tion rate is a stag­ger­ing sev­en­teen times greater for defen­dants con­vict­ed of killing a white vic­tim.”[5]

Other land­mark stud­ies have doc­u­ment­ed sim­i­lar phe­nom­e­na: after rat­ing cas­es based upon the per­ceived sever­i­ty of a mur­der, African Americans were more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death than white defen­dants irre­spec­tive of the race of the vic­tim and the sever­i­ty of the mur­der, and a death sen­tence was more like­ly to be imposed in a case involv­ing one or more white vic­tims, irre­spec­tive of the race of the defen­dant and the sever­i­ty of the mur­der. The com­bi­na­tion of race of vic­tim and race of defen­dant most like­ly to pro­duce a death ver­dict at all lev­els of sever­i­ty was a Black defen­dant and a white victim.

Graph from Baldus, et al., Racial Discrimination and the Death Penalty in the Post-Furman Era: An Empirical and Legal Overview with Recent Findings from Philadelphia, Cornell Law Review (1998).

A study of the death penal­ty in Philadelphia,[6] which in 2001 had 113 African Americans on death row — 25 more than any oth­er coun­ty in the U.S.[7] — found that the odds that a cap­i­tal tri­al would result in a death sen­tence were 3.1 times greater if the defen­dant was Black; and those odds became 9.3 times greater if the case advanced to a cap­i­tal penal­ty phase; and 29.0 times greater if a jury found both aggra­vat­ing and mit­i­gat­ing cir­cum­stances to be present and had to make the dis­cre­tionary choice between life or death. 

To explore the impact of racial bias — overt or implic­it — on cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing, oth­er researchers exam­ined whether the defendant’s appear­ance affect­ed the like­li­hood of a death sen­tence.[8] They rat­ed African American cap­i­tal defen­dants based upon the degree to which they had pro­to­typ­i­cal­ly African facial fea­tures (i.e., dark­er skin, broad­er nose, and thick­er lips) and exam­ined sen­tenc­ing out­comes based upon the race of the vic­tim. They found that a Black defendant’s appear­ance had no sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in sen­tenc­ing out­comes if the vic­tim also was Black. But in cas­es in which the vic­tim was white, a Black defen­dant with arche­typ­i­cal African fea­tures was twice as like­ly to be sen­tenced to death as a Black defen­dant with lighter skin, a nar­row­er nose, and thin­ner lips.

Image from the Philadelphia Looking Deathworthy” study, Eberhardt, et al., Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes, Psychological Science (2006).

The racist under­pin­nings of the U.S. death penal­ty — and its emer­gence as a suc­ces­sor to extra­ju­di­cial lynch­ings — can be seen most clear­ly in the his­tor­i­cal appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty for alle­ga­tions of rape. Between 1930 and 1972, 455 peo­ple in the United States were exe­cut­ed for rape. 405 (89.1%) of those exe­cut­ed were Black. 443 of the exe­cu­tions for rape (97.3%) occurred in the states of the for­mer Confederacy. No white man has ever been exe­cut­ed in the U.S. for the rape of a Black woman or child in which the vic­tim was not killed. For most of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Virginia per­mit­ted the death penal­ty for rape, attempt­ed rape, and armed rob­bery that did not result in death. 73 Black men and boys were exe­cut­ed on charges they had com­mit­ted non-lethal acts. No white per­son was exe­cut­ed for an offense that did not result in death.

In the mod­ern era” — since states began re-enact­ing death penal­ty laws after the Supreme Court struck down exist­ing death penal­ty statutes in 1972 — exe­cu­tions have been lim­it­ed to cas­es in which a vic­tim was killed. That has elim­i­nat­ed the huge racial bias present in death penal­ty cas­es for non-lethal offens­es. However, sig­nif­i­cant race-of defen­dant and race-of vic­tim bias remains. Executions dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly involve white vic­tims, sug­gest­ing an inap­pro­pri­ate race-based con­cep­tion of what con­sti­tutes the worst of the worst” killings. And among the most vul­ner­a­ble of defen­dants — juve­niles, late ado­les­cents, the intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, and those who are inno­cent and have been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death — sig­nif­i­cant bias per­me­ates the death penal­ty system.

More than two thirds (30 of 44) of the known intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled pris­on­ers who were exe­cut­ed before the Supreme Court banned the prac­tice in Atkins v. Virginia in 2002 were peo­ple of col­or. More than 60% (27 of 44) were Black. Over the next twen­ty years, U.S. states exe­cut­ed at least 29 more pris­on­ers who most like­ly were intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. More than three-quar­ters (22, 75.9%) were peo­ple of col­or and 62.1% (18 of 29) were Black. As of December 2022, at least 142 con­demned pris­on­ers had their death sen­tences over­turned under Atkins: More than 4 in 5 (118, 83.1%) were peo­ple of col­or and more than two-thirds (96, 67.6%) were Black.

Similarly, near­ly two-thirds (65.2%) of the 235 death sen­tences imposed on juve­nile offend­ers (under age 18) in the United States in the mod­ern era before the Supreme Court struck down that prac­tice in Roper v. Simmons in 2005 were peo­ple of col­or.[9] More than half (52.0%) were Black. 64.7% of the 1,319 death sen­tences imposed on late ado­les­cent offend­ers (between ages 18 and 21) in the U.S. in the mod­ern era have been direct­ed at peo­ple of col­or, with more than half imposed on Black ado­les­cents (51.2%).[10] Noting that Black youth are pun­ished more harsh­ly than Whites” and that it is clear death as a penal­ty is not applied equal­ly and fair­ly among mem­bers of the late ado­les­cent class,” the American Psychological Association in August 2022 adopt­ed a res­o­lu­tion call­ing for an end to the death penal­ty for indi­vid­u­als aged 18 – 20.

The National Registry of Exonerations has doc­u­ment­ed that Black defen­dants charged with mur­der are much more vul­ner­a­ble to wrong­ful con­vic­tions than are their white coun­ter­parts. In its 2022 report, Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States, the Registry found that Black peo­ple are about 7½ times more like­ly to be wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der in the U.S. than are whites, and about 80% more like­ly to be inno­cent than oth­ers con­vict­ed of mur­der. The already dis­pro­por­tion­ate risk of wrong­ful con­vic­tion, the Registry found, was even worse if the mur­der vic­tim in a case was white. 

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, death-row exon­er­a­tions high­light the enhanced risk of wrong­ful con­vic­tion that inno­cent defen­dants of col­or face in their cap­i­tal tri­als. Nearly two-thirds of wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed death-row pris­on­ers who have sub­se­quent­ly been exon­er­at­ed are indi­vid­u­als of col­or and more than half are Black. As of March 2023, DPIC had doc­u­ment­ed 191 death-row exon­er­a­tions since 1973: one exon­er­a­tion for every 8.2 exe­cu­tions in the United States in the past half cen­tu­ry. DPIC’s exon­er­a­tion data shows that exonerees of col­or, and par­tic­u­lar­ly those who are Black, are more like­ly to be vic­tims of offi­cial mis­con­duct and false accu­sa­tion, more like­ly to be wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and con­demned, and more like­ly to spend longer peri­ods fac­ing exe­cu­tion or under the con­tin­u­ing shad­ow of their wrong­ful con­vic­tion than white death-row exonerees.

Reframing the Death Penalty as a Human Rights Issue Rather than a Legitimate Tool of Public Safety

In most of the demo­c­ra­t­ic nations of the world, the death penal­ty is viewed as a human rights issue. And when the United States looks out­ward at the death penal­ty poli­cies and prac­tices of auto­crat­ic regimes like Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea, and Belarus, it, too, tends to frame the issue in terms of human rights. But Americans rarely turn the human rights lens inward towards this nation’s death penal­ty prac­tices. Instead, inter­nal­ly, the death penal­ty tends to be dis­cussed as a legit­i­mate crim­i­nal legal pol­i­cy option in pro­mot­ing and pro­tect­ing pub­lic safety.

However, that is begin­ning to change as his­to­ri­ans, aca­d­e­mics, and pol­i­cy advo­cates increas­ing­ly address the his­tor­i­cal use of enslave­ment and pun­ish­ment as instru­ments of social con­trol in the United States and the con­tin­u­ing role the death penal­ty plays in legit­imiz­ing oth­er poli­cies of mass incarceration. 

In a 2015 inter­view with The Marshall Project, Equal Justice Initiative founder and exec­u­tive direc­tor Bryan Stevenson observed that the United States has nev­er com­mit­ted itself to a con­ver­sa­tion about the lega­cy of slav­ery. … Very few peo­ple in this coun­try have any aware­ness of just how expan­sive and how debil­i­tat­ing and destruc­tive America’s his­to­ry of slav­ery is.”

The whole nar­ra­tive of white suprema­cy was cre­at­ed dur­ing the era of slav­ery. It was a nec­es­sary the­o­ry to make white Christian peo­ple feel com­fort­able with their own­er­ship of oth­er human beings,” Stevenson said. And we cre­at­ed a nar­ra­tive of racial dif­fer­ence in this coun­try to sus­tain slav­ery, and even peo­ple who didn’t own slaves bought into that nar­ra­tive, includ­ing peo­ple in the North. … We cre­at­ed a nar­ra­tive of racial dif­fer­ence to main­tain slav­ery. And our 13th amend­ment nev­er dealt with that nar­ra­tive. It didn’t talk about white suprema­cy. The Emancipation Proclamation doesn’t dis­cuss the ide­ol­o­gy of white suprema­cy or the nar­ra­tive of racial dif­fer­ence. So I don’t believe slav­ery end­ed in 1865, I believe it just evolved. It turned into decades of racial hier­ar­chy that was vio­lent­ly enforced — from the end of recon­struc­tion until WWII — through acts of racial terror.”

During the 2018 ded­i­ca­tion of EJI’s lynch­ing memo­r­i­al, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, Stevenson called cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment the stepchild of lynch­ing. … It was dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly used against peo­ple of col­or; it still con­tin­ues to be shaped pri­mar­i­ly by race,” he said.

Stevenson argues that we’ve used the death penal­ty to sus­tain racial hier­ar­chy by mak­ing it pri­mar­i­ly a tool to rein­force the vic­tim­iza­tion of white peo­ple. The great­est racial dis­par­i­ty of the death penal­ty is the way in which the death penal­ty is large­ly reserved for cas­es where the vic­tims are white. … And that’s true through­out this coun­try. We’ve used it par­tic­u­lar­ly aggres­sive­ly when minor­i­ty defen­dants are accused of killing white peo­ple. And his­to­ry is replete with defen­dants being described with the n‑word, cas­es just sat­u­rat­ed with racial big­otry, and the courts have large­ly tol­er­at­ed that.” He says that the occa­sion­al pur­suit of the death penal­ty for hate crimes tar­get­ing Black vic­tims does not legit­imize the death penal­ty. We can’t be dis­tract­ed by think­ing that if they exe­cute one per­son who com­mit­ted mass vio­lence that’s some sign of progress. That’s a sign of tac­ti­cal mis­di­rec­tion to pre­serve a sys­tem that is inher­ent­ly cor­rupt­ed by a nar­ra­tive of racial difference.”

In a 2023 Discussions With DPIC pod­cast inter­view, Georgetown University Racial Justice Institute Executive Director Diann Rust-Tierney observed that for a long time, the death penal­ty has been mis­clas­si­fied … as if it was a nor­mal pub­lic safe­ty tool, notwith­stand­ing the fact that there is no rela­tion­ship between safe­ty and the death penal­ty, that we don’t see reduc­tion in the crime or mur­der in places that use the death penal­ty.” Rust-Tierney describes the sug­ges­tion that the death penal­ty is a tool of pub­lic safe­ty as fic­tion.” Rather, she says, the death penal­ty real­ly [is] part of some­thing much more ter­ri­ble. It is part of the racial caste sys­tem in the United States.”

[F]rom its very begin­ning in his­to­ry, from the very first time that Africans were brought to the United States to work, it was part of a legal and social sys­tem designed to keep var­i­ous races in their place and to rein­force the insti­tu­tion of slav­ery,” Rust-Tierney says. And the most impor­tant thing that the death penal­ty does, and did then, is to tell us the val­ue of dif­fer­ent lives. In oth­er words, it places a dif­fer­ent val­ue on the life of a vic­tim, depend­ing upon their race, and it places a dif­fer­ent val­ue on the life of the defen­dant based on their race. That’s some­thing we’ve seen his­tor­i­cal­ly, and so it was impor­tant to under­stand that the death penal­ty is not a tool of pub­lic safe­ty, but it is in fact, a tool of racial and social oppression.”

Rust-Tierney frames the dis­cus­sion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the U.S. and world­wide as part of a glob­al strug­gle for human rights, a glob­al strug­gle for democ­ra­cy.” She notes that the most aggres­sive death penal­ty states in the U.S. are engag­ing in a broad range of anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic prac­tices, mak­ing their exe­cu­tion prac­tices state secrets, attempt­ing to bar African Americans from jury ser­vice through reg­u­la­tions and rules that lim­it who can serve on a jury or through the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry use of jury strikes, attempt­ing to over­turn the results of local elec­tions in which reform pros­e­cu­tors have said that they don’t intend to seek the death penal­ty or are going to seek the death penal­ty more spar­ing­ly, and try­ing to oppress a sig­nif­i­cant seg­ment of their pop­u­la­tion through vot­er sup­pres­sion. The real­i­ty,” she says, is that the death penal­ty is a tool of oppres­sion. Autocrats and anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic peo­ple and dic­ta­tors use death as pun­ish­ment, and they wield it where they will, and how they will …. [T]he death penal­ty is a tool of power.” 

Rust-Tierney says it’s time to stand on the side of either democ­ra­cy and self deter­mi­na­tion and human rights on this side or on the side of autoc­ra­cy and oppres­sion and dic­ta­tors. And in that stark con­trast, you have to oppose the death penalty.”

Resources

DPIC Webinars: Webinar on Race and the U.S. Death Penalty ;

German Embassy Panel on Human Rights & the U.S. Death Penalty, Diann Rust Tierney speaks at 54min

DPIC Report: Enduring Injustice

DPIC Webpage: Race Page

DPIC Podcast: Georgetown Racial Justice Institute Director Diann Rust-Tierney on Reconceptualizing the U.S. Death Penalty as a Violation of Fundamental Human Rights

Human Rights Council holds an urgent debate on cur­rent racial­ly inspired human rights vio­la­tions, sys­temic racism, police bru­tal­i­ty and vio­lence against peace­ful protests

2022 Report: A/​HRC/​51/​53: Promotion and pro­tec­tion of the human rights and fun­da­men­tal free­doms of Africans and of peo­ple of African descent against exces­sive use of force and oth­er human rights vio­la­tions by law enforce­ment offi­cers through trans­for­ma­tive change for

Agenda towards trans­for­ma­tive change for racial jus­tice and equality

2021 Report: A/​HRC/​47/​53: Promotion and pro­tec­tion of the human rights and fun­da­men­tal free­doms of Africans and of peo­ple of African descent against exces­sive use of force and oth­er human rights vio­la­tions by law enforce­ment officers

International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination

IACHR Precautionary Measure on Julius Jones

2020 Universal Period Review of United States Human Rights Record

Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide: Discrimination Page

Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide: Arbitrariness Page

Cornell Center on the Death Penalty Worldwide: Due Process Page

Footnotes:

[1] David Jacobs, Jason T. Carmichael, and Stephanie L. Kent, Vigilantism, Current Racial Threat, and Death Sentences, American Sociological Review 656 – 77, Vol. 70 (Aug. 2005).

[2] Frank R. Baumgartner, Christian Caron, and Scott Duxbury, Racial Resentment and the Death Penalty, The Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics 1 – 19 (2022).

[3] Jeffrey Fagan, Garth Davies, and Raymond Paternoster, Getting to Death: Race and the Paths of Capital Cases After Furman, 107 Cornell Law Review 1565 – 1620 (2022); Scott Phillips and Justin F. Marceau, Whom the State Kills, 55 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 585 – 656, Issue 2 (Summer 2020).

[4] Fagan et al., at 1565.

[5] Phillips and Marceau, at 603.

[6] David C. Baldus, George Woodworth, David Zuckerman, and Neil Alan Weiner, Racial Discrimination and the Death Penalty in the Post-Furman Era: An Empirical and Legal Overview with Recent Findings from Philadelphia, 83 Cornell Law Review 1638 – 1770 (1998).

[7] Robert Dunham, Racial com­po­si­tion of death row in the sev­en­ty most pop­u­lous coun­ties in states with the death penal­ty, July 16, 2001, doc­u­ment on file with the Death Penalty Information Center.

[8] Jennifer L. Eberhardt, P G. Davies, Valerie J. Purdie-Vaughns, and Sheri Lynn Johnson, Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes, Psychological Science 383 – 86, Vol. 17, No. 5 (2006).

[9] For whom race is known. 235 peo­ple were sen­tenced to death for crimes com­mit­ted before they turned age 18. 115 were Black; 77 were white; 26 were Hispanic; 3 were of oth­er races; and race data was miss­ing for 14.

[10] Again, for whom race is known. 1,319 death sen­tences were imposed on late ado­les­cent offend­ers. 640 were Black; 442 were white; 139 were Hispanic; 30 were of oth­er races; and race data was miss­ing for 68 cases.