Additional Resources

Archival DPIC Content

• Race News and Developments: 1998 – 2003
• Race News and Developments: 2004

DPIC Resources

Reports and Analysis

• The Death Penalty in Black and White: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides
• Racial Disparities in Federal Death Penalty Prosecutions 1988 – 1994
• Chattahoochee Judicial District: BUCKLE OF THE DEATH BELT: The Death Penalty in Microcosm
• DPIC Summary of North Carolina v. Robinson, the first rul­ing issued under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act (April 22, 2012). UPDATE: In 2013, the Racial Justice Act was repealed. In 2015, the state Supreme Court vacat­ed the rul­ing in North Carolina v. Robinson, hold­ing that the state should have been giv­en more time to review and respond to stud­ies show­ing racial bias in jury selection.
• Enduring Injustice: The Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty
• Deeply Rooted: How Racial History Informs Oklahoma’s Death Penalty
• Doomed to Repeat: The Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty
• Compromised Justice: How a Legacy of Racial Violence Informs Missouri’s Death Penalty Today
• Broken Promises: How a History of Racial Violence and Bias Shaped Ohio’s Death Penalty

Podcasts

• Discussions with DPIC – Professor Elisabeth Semel on the Implications of Batson v. Kentucky and California’s Capital Punishment System
• Discussions with DPIC – Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty with Tiana Herring
• Discussions with DPIC – DPIC’s New Report on the Racial History of Oklahoma’s Death Penalty
• Georgetown Racial Justice Institute Director Diann Rust-Tierney on Reconceptualizing the U.S. Death Penalty as a Violation of Fundamental Human Rights
• 35 Years After McCleskey v. Kemp, Prof. Alexis Hoag Discusses the Decision’s Leegacy
• Discussions with DPIC – Julius Jones’ Long Road On and Off Death Row, and What Comes Next in His Case
• Discussions with DPIC – Contra Costs County, California District Attorney Diana Becton on Fair and Just Legal Reform and Ending the Death Penalty
• Discussions with DPIC – Professor Frank Baumgartner on Death-Penalty Data, Public Opinion, and Capital Punishment as a ​“Failed Experiment”
• Discussions with DPIC – Injustice in Virginia: The Case of the ​“Martinsville 7”
• Discussions with DPIC – Gretchen Engel on the Racist Roots Report from the Center for Death Penalty Litigation
• Discussions with DPIC – Henderson Hill and the North Carolina Racial Justice Act
• Discussions with DPIC – He May Be Innocent and Intellectually Disabled, But Rocky Myers Faces Execution in Alabama
• Discussions with DPIC – The Effect of Race on Sentencing Decisions in Washington with Dr. Katherine Beckett and Dr. Heather Evans
• Discussions With DPIC — Professor Bharat Malkani Explores the Relationship Between Slavery and Slavery-Abolition Strategies and the Modern U.S. Death Penalty
• Discussions With DPIC — Racial Discrimination in Death-Penalty Jury Selection: A Conversation with Steve Bright
• 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
• On the Issues — Episode 6: Race

Other Resources

• NAACP Death Penalty Fact Sheet 
• THE ROLE OF RACE IN WASHINGTON STATE CAPITAL 
• National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers Race and the Death Penalty
• Equal Justice USA Racial Inequality and the Death Penalty
• The American Death Penalty and the (In)Visibility of Race, The University of Chicago Law Review (Winter 2015) — After sur­vey­ing the cen­tral­i­ty of race both to the his­to­ry of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in America and to the lit­i­gants’ con­sti­tu­tion­al strat­e­gy, the authors doc­u­ment the Court’s strate­gies of avoid­ance [of address­ing racial dis­par­i­ties in the death penal­ty process.] They then con­sid­er pos­si­ble expla­na­tions for the Court’s silence and note some unan­tic­i­pat­ed con­se­quences of the Court’s ​‘race-neu­tral’ approach to its con­sti­tu­tion­al reg­u­la­tion of capital punishment.
• SENTENCING, 1981 – 2014 (Originally pub­lished Jan. 27, 2014, updat­ed with addi­tion­al data 2015). The orig­i­nal ver­sion of the study, cov­er­ing only 1981 – 2012, is avail­able here.
• A History of Racial Injustice - Timeline from the Equal Justice Initiative (2013)
• Persuasion and Resistance: Race and the Death Penalty in America, American Journal of Political Science (October 2007) — Examines the ​‘race gap’ between the sup­port for the death penal­ty among black and white peo­ple in America and explores pos­si­ble expla­na­tions using empirical data.
• Amnesty Report Finds Racial Injustice in Death Penalty — According to a new report issued by Amnesty International, race con­tin­ues to play a strong role in U.S. death penal­ty cas­es. In ​“US: Death by Discrimination — The Continuing Role of Race in Capital Cases,” (April 23, 2003) Amnesty states that:
  • Even though blacks and whites are mur­der vic­tims in near­ly equal num­bers of crimes, 80% of peo­ple exe­cut­ed since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed have been exe­cut­ed for mur­ders involv­ing white victims.
  • More than 20% of black defen­dants who have been exe­cut­ed were con­vict­ed by all-white juries.

The report also exam­ines case law and inter­na­tion­al poli­cies relat­ed to race and the death penalty.

• Maryland Study Finds that Race and Geography Play Key Roles in Death Penalty — According to the find­ings of a Governor-com­mis­sioned death penal­ty study con­duct­ed by researchers at the University of Maryland, the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem is taint­ed with racial bias, and geog­ra­phy plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in who faces a cap­i­tal con­vic­tion. The study, one of the nation’s most com­pre­hen­sive offi­cial reviews on race and the death penal­ty, con­clud­ed that defen­dants are much more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death if they have killed a white per­son. See DPIC’s Press Release. For more infor­ma­tion about the study, see the Executive Summary and Complete Study (Released on January 7, 2003).
• Indiana Death Penalty Commission Prepares to Release Study — The Indiana Criminal Law Study Commission met recent­ly to review the final draft of a year-long study on the state’s death penal­ty. The draft report indi­cates that race of the vic­tim plays a role in death penal­ty sen­tenc­ing. The report includ­ed a cost analy­sis that indi­cates it costs the state 35 – 37% more to have the death penal­ty than it would if life with­out parole were the most severe pun­ish­ment avail­able. Governor Frank O’Bannon asked the Commission to review the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem after inno­cent inmates were dis­cov­ered and freed from death rows in oth­er states. The final report is due to be released in December. (Indianapolis Star, 11/​9/​01)
• New Jersey Supreme Court Report Finds Disturbing Evidence Regarding Race and the Death Penalty — A report released by the New Jersey Supreme Court found that the state’s death penal­ty law is more like­ly to pro­ceed against defen­dants who kill white vic­tims. ​“There is unset­tling sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence indi­cat­ing that cas­es involv­ing killers of white vic­tims are more like­ly to progress to a penal­ty phase than cas­es involv­ing killers of African-American vic­tims,” the report states. Appellate Division Judge David S. Baime, who con­duct­ed the study, said that the find­ings that more cap­i­tal cas­es are con­sid­ered in white, sub­ur­ban neigh­bor­hoods should be exam­ined by the attor­ney gen­er­al’s office. (Asbury Park Press, 8/​13/​01)
• “Race and the Death Penalty in North Carolina An Empirical Analysis: 1993 – 1997″ This study, the most com­pre­hen­sive ever con­duct­ed on the death penal­ty in North Carolina, was released by researchers from the University of North Carolina. The study, based on data col­lect­ed from court records of 502 mur­der cas­es from 1993 to 1997, found that race plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in who gets the death penal­ty. Prof. Jack Boger and Dr. Isaac Unah of the University of North Carolina found that defen­dants whose vic­tims are white are 3.5 times more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death than those with non-white vic­tims. ​“The odds are sup­posed to be zero that race plays a role,” said Dr. Unah. ​“No mat­ter how the data was ana­lyzed, the race of the vic­tim always emerged as an impor­tant fac­tor in who received the death penal­ty.” The study’s find­ings will be pre­sent­ed to the North Carolina General Assembly which is cur­rent­ly con­sid­er­ing mora­to­ri­um bills in both the House and Senate. (Associated Press, 4/​16/​01 and Common Sense Foundation Press Release, 4/​16/​01) Read DPIC’s Press Advisory.
• “Unequal, Unfair, and Irreversible: The Death Penalty in Virginia” — This new report, pub­lished by the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, exam­ines four key aspects of the admin­is­tra­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in Virginia: race, pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al dis­cre­tion in the charg­ing of cap­i­tal crimes, qual­i­ty of legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion for the accused, and appel­late review of tri­als result­ing in the death penal­ty. The report’s prin­ci­pal findings are:
  • race is a con­trol­ling fac­tor in the way the death penal­ty is admin­is­tered in Virginia
  • tri­al attor­neys appoint­ed to rep­re­sent those on Virginia’s death row are six times more like­ly to be the sub­ject of bar dis­ci­pli­nary pro­ceed­ings than are other lawyers
  • the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has grant­ed relief in only one of 131 cap­i­tal cas­es between 1978 – 1997.

The report is avail­able from the ACLU of Virginia by call­ing (804) 644‑8080.

• The Federal Death Penalty System: A Statistical Survey (1988 – 2000) A review of the fed­er­al death penal­ty by the Justice Department, released on September 12, 2000, found numer­ous racial and geo­graph­ic dis­par­i­ties. The report revealed that 80% of the cas­es sub­mit­ted by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors for death penal­ty review in the past five years have involved racial minori­ties as defen­dants. In more than half of those cas­es, the defen­dant was African-American. Attorney General Janet Reno said she was ​“sore­ly trou­bled” by the results of the report and has ordered United States attor­neys to help explain the racial and eth­nic dis­par­i­ties. The report also found that 40% of the 682 cas­es sent to the Justice Department for approval to seek the death penal­ty were filed by only five juris­dic­tions. ​“I can’t help but be both per­son­al­ly and pro­fes­sion­al­ly dis­turbed by the num­bers that we dis­cuss today,” said Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder. “[N]o one read­ing this report can help but be dis­turbed, trou­bled, by this dis­par­i­ty.” Reno is expect­ed to announce more stud­ies of the admin­is­tra­tion of the fed­er­al death penal­ty. (New York Times, 9/​12 – 13/​00) See also, DPIC’s sum­ma­ry of the report find­ings.