Policy Issues
Race
Racial bias against defendants of color and in favor of white victims has a strong effect on who is capitally prosecuted, sentenced to death, and executed.
DPIC Podcast: Discussions With DPIC
The Duane Buck Case: Race, Future Dangerousness, and the Death Penalty, with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s Christina Swarns
Overview
The death penalty has long come under scrutiny for being racially biased. Earlier in the twentieth century when it was applied for the crime of rape, 89 percent of the executions involved black defendants, most for the rape of a white woman. In the modern era, when executions have been carried out exclusively for murder, 75 percent of the cases involve the murder of white victims, even though blacks and whites are about equally likely to be victims of murder.
A bias towards white-victim cases has been found in almost all of the sophisticated studies exploring this area over many years. These studies typically control for other variables in the cases studied, such as the number of victims or the brutality of the crime, and still found that defendants were more likely to be sentenced to death if they killed a white person.
The issue of racial disparities in the use of the death penalty was considered by the Supreme Court in 1987. In a close vote, the Court held that studies alone could not provide the required proof of racial discrimination in a particular defendant’s case. This decision appeared to close the door to broad challenges to the death penalty. However, the Court has found racial discrimination in the selection of the jury in individual capital cases.
At Issue
Today there is growing evidence that racial bias continues in society, particularly within the criminal justice system. The existence of implicit racial bias among some law enforcement officers, witnesses, jurors, and others allows harsher punishment of minorities, even without legal sanction or intention. Although these prejudices are hard to uproot, the unfair application of the death penalty could be halted by eliminating that sentencing option altogether.
What DPIC Offers
DPIC tracks the race of those on death row, those who have been executed, the victims in the underlying crime, and many related statistics. It collects the sophisticated studies on racial bias that have been published over many years. Many of DPIC’s reports focus on aspects of this question and some are devoted entirely to the issue of race.
Sep 15, 2020
DPIC Releases Major New Report on Race and the U.S. Death Penalty
The Death Penalty Information Center has released a major new report on race and the U.S. death penalty, providing an in-depth look at the historical role race has played in the death penalty and detailing the pervasive impact rac…
Read MoreNews & Developments
Juveniles
Aug 12, 2022
American Psychological Association Overwhelmingly Votes to Adopt Resolution Opposing Death Penalty for Adolescents Aged 18 – 20
The American Psychological Association (APA) has overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling for courts and legislators to ban the use of the death penalty against people charged with committing crimes while they were under age 21. Saying that “th…
Arbitrariness
Aug 04, 2022
As Trial in South Carolina Execution-Method Challenge Begins, Review of State’s Death Penalty Reveals System that is Biased, Arbitrary, and Error-Prone
As the trial challenging South Carolina’s execution methods began on Augu…
Arbitrariness
Jul 20, 2022
New DPIC Podcast: The Death Penalty Census
Data from fifty years of the modern U.S. death penalty reveal “a system that is rife with error, filled with discrimination, [and] very, very difficult to fairly administer,” Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham says …
Race
Jul 13, 2022
Marcus Robinson Remembered for Pioneering Racial Justice Case
Marcus Robinson (pictured), the first person to be granted relief under North Carolina’s trailblazing Racial Justice Act, has died. Robinson, who was sentenced to death in 1994 for a crime he committed shortly aft…
Race
Jul 12, 2022
Law Review: Criminal Defendants Have Limited Ability to Make Meaningful Choices, Especially in Capital Trials
A new law review article highlights the lack of protections for criminal defendants’ rights to make meaningful decisions despite court-recognized rights to autonomy. In “The Myth of Autonomy Rights,” a 2021 article published in the Cardozo Law…
Race
Jul 05, 2022
Ketanji Brown Jackson Becomes First Black Woman to Serve as a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court
Ketanji Brown Jackson has been sworn in as an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the first Black woman to serve as a justice in the 232-year history of the Court. In an historic ceremony at the Supreme …
Arbitrariness
Jun 29, 2022
On Anniversary of Furman v. Georgia, DPIC Census of U.S. Death Sentences Details 50 Years of Arbitrariness, Bias, and Error
On the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 29, 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia that struck down all existing death penalty laws, the Death Penalty Information Center released its Death Penalty Census. The census …
Arbitrariness
Jun 22, 2022
On 20th Anniversary of Atkins v. Virginia, Supreme Court Denies Petition to Review Procedural Loophole Permitting Execution of Intellectually Disabled Prisoners
On the twentieth anniversary of its landmark decision in Atkins v. Virginia prohibiting the use of the death penalty against individuals with intellectual disability, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a Florida case that c…
Innocence
Jun 21, 2022
Pennsylvania Teen Exonerated 91 Years After Sham Trial and Execution on Racially Motivated Charges that He Had Murdered a White Woman
An African-American teenager who was convicted and sentenced to death in Pennsylvania on false charges that he had murdered a white woman has been exonerated, 91 years after he was executed. On June 13, 2022, Delaw…
Arbitrariness
Jun 10, 2022
STUDIES: Louisiana Study Finds Race and Gender Bias in Application of Death Penalty
Louisiana’s death penalty is disproportionately imposed in cases involving white female victims, especially if the defendant in the case is a Black man, a new study by three leading death-penalty researchers has confirmed. Louisiana prosecutors we…
