Biases & Vulnerabilities

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.

Racial Justice Reports

DPI's reports on the racial history of the death penalty in individual states

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 about half of all homi­cide vic­tims in America are black.

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.

News & Developments


News

May 08, 2025

New Analysis: Capital Cases Overturned At Least Four Times Illustrate How Pervasive Prosecutorial Misconduct Contributes to High Cost of Death Penalty

The sin­gle most com­mon out­come for a death sen­tence in the mod­ern era is for it to be reversed on appeal due to a con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tion. Most peo­ple whose sen­tences are reversed get resen­tenced to life in prison or less, but some pros­e­cu­tors per­sist in seek­ing new death sen­tences even after mul­ti­ple rever­sals. A Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of the 14 peo­ple sen­tenced to death four or more times for the same crime finds that prosecutorial…

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News

May 06, 2025

New DPI Data Analysis: How Race Affects Capital Charging and Sentencing of 18 to 20-Year-Olds

In com­mem­o­ra­tion of the 20th anniver­sary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s land­mark deci­sion end­ing the juve­nile death penal­ty, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) has released a new report: Immature Minds in a​“Maturing Society”: Roper v. Simmons at 20, detail­ing the grow­ing sup­port for the idea that indi­vid­u­als ages 18, 19, and 20 should receive the same age-appro­pri­ate con­sid­er­a­tions that juve­niles now receive in death penal­ty cas­es. The report also reveals…

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News

Apr 30, 2025

New DPI Report Examines the Legacy of Roper v. Simmons and Its Implications for 18- to 20-Year-Olds in Death Penalty Cases

In com­mem­o­ra­tion of the 20th anniver­sary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s land­mark deci­sion end­ing the juve­nile death penal­ty, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPI) today released a new report: Immature Minds in a​“Maturing Society”: Roper v. Simmons at 20, detail­ing grow­ing sup­port that indi­vid­u­als ages 18, 19, and 20 should receive the same age-appro­pri­ate con­sid­er­a­tions that juve­niles now receive in death penal­ty cas­es. > [T]here is no bright line regarding…

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News

Mar 28, 2025

He Looks a Little Like the Defendant”: A Closer Look at the History of Racial Bias in Jury Selection

As clos­ing argu­ments of his tri­al began in Johnston County, North Carolina, Hasson Bacote watched as Assistant District Attorney Gregory Butler urged the jury to sen­tence him to death. Mr. Bacote, a Black man, had been con­vict­ed of fatal­ly shoot­ing 18-year-old Anthony Surles dur­ing a rob­bery when Mr. Bacote was just 21 years old. Mr. Bacote admit­ted he had fired a sin­gle shot out of a trail­er, but said he did not know that he hit any­one.​“Hasson Bacote is a thug: cold-blooded…

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News

Feb 27, 2025

New Podcast: The Past, Present, and Future of the California Racial Justice Act

In the February 2025 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with three experts on California’s Racial Justice Act (RJA). Natasha Minsker, an attor­ney and con­sul­tant, for­mer­ly of the ACLU, speaks on the his­to­ry of the RJA and the impe­tus for its pas­sage. Genevie Gold, research and writ­ing fel­low at the Office of the State Public Defender (OSPD), describes the process that an RJA claim fol­lows through the legal sys­tem, and…

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