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
Innocence
Jun 08, 2021
Ohio Black Churches and Legislative Black Caucus Join Push to Abolish the State’s Death Penalty
Building on what they describe as growing momentum to end capital punishment and greater awareness of racial justice concerns, a coalition of Ohio African-American church and legislative leaders are putting their weight behind
Race
May 28, 2021
In New Round of Racial Justice Act Litigation, North Carolina Judge Orders Prosecutors to Disclose Data on Decades of Jury Strikes
In the first Racial Justice Act case to reach a hearing since the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the state legislature’s attempt to retroactively repeal the landmark law, a North Carolina judge has ordered state prosecut…
Intellectual Disability
May 10, 2021
Federal Court Reverses Death Sentence Imposed on Defendant Represented By Georgia Lawyer With History of Ineffectiveness and Racial Bias
A federal appeals court has reversed the death sentence of an African-American Georgia death-row prisoner who was represented at trial by a defense lawyer notorious for his history of substandard representation and racial bias in …
Race
May 06, 2021
South Carolina Legislature Authorizes Use of Electric Chair and Firing Squad as State Reaches 10 Years Without an Execution
One day shy of the tenth anniversary of the state’s last execution, the South Carolina legislature, frustrated by the state’s inability to obtain execution drugs, approved a bill that would authorize putting prisoners to death in …
Race
Apr 30, 2021
Martin Luther King III: Virginia’s Death Penalty Repeal Shows ‘What is Possible When We Confront This Country’s Racist Past’
The history of racial oppression and lynching in the U.S. South has, civil rights advocate Martin Luther King III writes, “too frequently … gone untold and unaddressed.” But, he says in an April 17, 2021 op-ed in USA Today
Race
Apr 28, 2021
Supreme Court Declines to Review Death Penalty Case in Which Georgia Defendant was Forced to Reenact the Murder While in Shackles
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a Georgia death-penalty case in which the prosecution was permitted to make a visibly shackled defendant reenact the murder in front of the jury, while his defense cou…
Race
Apr 22, 2021
Commentary: Ending Capital Punishment is a Core Component of Reconceptualizing ‘Public Safety’ in an Era of Punitive Excess
As the United States undergoes an awakening on racial injustices in policing and the judicial process, commentators and public policy advocates are calling for a reimagining of public safety and criminal punishment that rejects the reflexive impos…
Innocence
Apr 14, 2021
Nevada State Assembly Passes Bill to Repeal Death Penalty and Resentence Death-Row Prisoners to Life
The Nevada State Assembly has passed a bill that would abolish the state’s death penalty and resentence the prisoners currently on its death row to life without parole. It was the first time any death-penalty abolition bill had be…
Innocence
Apr 02, 2021
Clemency Efforts for Pervis Payne Gain Widespread Support as Execution Reprieve Set to Expire
Clemency efforts on behalf of Tennessee death-row prisoner Pervis Payne (pictured) are surging, as a petition on his behalf by The Innocence Project had collected more than 600,000 signatures by M…
Arbitrariness
Mar 15, 2021
Commentary: Death-Penalty Reform Requires Action at the State Level
In the United States, the responsibility for defining what is a crime and enforcing the criminal laws rests primarily with the states. That fact, New York Times columnist Charles Blow (pictured) writes, makes action at th…
