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.
News & Developments
Arbitrariness
Mar 10, 2023
LAW REVIEWS— Getting to Death: Examining the Role of Race in the Steps Leading to a Death Sentence
In an article in the Cornell Law Review, Professors Jeffrey Fagan, Garth Davies, and Raymond Paternoster show how arbitrariness and race operate at each stage of a capital case, from charging death-eligible cases to plea negotiations to t…
Race
Mar 01, 2023
RESEARCH: History of Lynchings Linked to Increased Death Sentencing for Black Defendants
Researchers based at the University of North Carolina found a strong statistical relationship between the level of racial resentment in a state and the number of death sentences handed down on Black people. In particular, racial resentment was a s…
Arbitrariness
Feb 17, 2023
LAW REVIEWS: Ensuring Black Lives Matter When the Penalty Is Death
In a 2022 article published in the Idaho Journal of Critical Legal Studies, author Sidney Balman (pictured), examines the relationship between racism and geographical arbitrariness in the application of the death penalty in the U.S. As in other ar…
Juveniles
Feb 10, 2023
STUDIES: Raising the Age of Those Eligible for the Death Penalty Would Likely Reduce Racial Disparities
Professor Craig Haney (pictured) of the University of California, Santa Cruz, Professor Frank Baumgartner of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Karen Steele, a criminal defense attorney in Oregon, examined age and race data from …
Race
Jan 20, 2023
Kansas Capital Defendant Moves to Bar Death Penalty, Invoking State Constitution’s ‘Strict Scrutiny’ For Life and Liberty Issues
A Kansas capital defendant is challenging the prosecution’s decision to pursue the death penalty in his case, invoking a heightened standard of review the Kansas constitution applies to infringements of fundamental rights.
Human Rights
Jan 06, 2023
DPIC Podcast: Georgetown Racial Justice Institute Director Diann Rust-Tierney on Reconceptualizing the U.S. Death Penalty as a Violation of Fundamental Human Rights
Longtime civil and human rights lawyer, Diann Rust-Tierney, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Racial Justice Institute, joins Death Penalty Information Center executive director Robert Dunham in the first DPIC podcast of 2023 for a…
Arbitrariness
Jan 03, 2023
Court Recommends New Trial for Texas Death-Row Prisoner, Finding Rights Violated by Trial Judge’s Virulent Anti-Semitism
A Dallas County judge has recommended that the conviction and death sentence of a Jewish death-row prisoner be overturned because his trial was poisoned by the virulent anti-Semitic bigotry of the Texas judge who …
Mental Illness
Nov 29, 2022
Texas Schedules Execution of Mentally Ill Prisoner Who Ate His Eye, After SCOTUS Refuses to Review Evidence of Racial Bias
Texas is planning to execute a seriously mentally ill prisoner who has gouged out both of his eyes because of his paranoid schizophrenia. On November 7, 2022, the District Court of Grayson County, Texas set an April 5, 2023 execution date for
Race
Nov 28, 2022
Missouri Executes Kevin Johnson Despite Special Prosecutor’s Call to Vacate Death Sentence
Despite a court-appointed special prosecutor’s request to vacate his death sentence, Missouri executed death-row prisoner Kevin Johnson (pictured, with daughter Khorry Ramey, left, and newborn grandson) on Novembe…
Human Rights
Nov 10, 2022
Death Penalty Information Center Launches Series on Human Rights and the U.S. Death Penalty
The Death Penalty Information Center, supported by the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, launched a new project on Human Rights and the U.S. Death Penalty on November 4, 2022, with a live…
