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

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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News

Feb 20, 2025

Article of Interest: New Equal Justice Initiative Report Shines a Spotlight on Historic Patterns of Jury Discrimination and the Role of Non-Diverse Juries in Wrongful Convictions

A new report from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), Unreliable Verdicts: Racial Bias and Wrongful Convictions, explores the his­to­ry of racial bias in jury selec­tion in the United States, includ­ing the last 40 years of racial­­ly-dis­­crim­i­­na­­to­ry pre­emp­to­ry jury strikes, and high­lights the grow­ing body of research show­ing that jury bias is reduced and the delib­er­a­tive process enhanced when juries are more diverse. Looking at the pool of doc­u­ment­ed death penalty…

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News

Feb 11, 2025

State Spotlight: California Death Row Shrinks Sharply in 2024, Driven by the Resentencing of At Least 45 People to Life Sentences or Less

When California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in 2019, he said that the state’s​“death penal­ty sys­tem has been, by all mea­sures, a fail­ure.” He explained that the death penal­ty​“has dis­crim­i­nat­ed against defen­dants who are men­tal­ly ill, Black and brown, or can’t afford expen­sive legal representation…[while pro­vid­ing] no pub­lic safe­ty ben­e­fit or val­ue as a deter­rent.” In 2024, California courts agreed that exe­cu­tion was not the…

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News

Feb 07, 2025

Judge Finds Race Plays a Significant Role” in Death Sentences in Three North Carolina Counties

On February 7, 2025, Johnston County Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons ruled “[r]ace was a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor” in both jury selec­tion and the deci­sion to impose death in the case of Hasson Bacote and grant­ed relief for Mr. Bacote from his death sen­tence under the pro­vi­sions of North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act (RJA). Judge Sermons also found racial dis­crim­i­na­tion taint­ed all death sen­tences in Johnston County and neigh­bor­ing Harnett and Lee Counties, potentially…

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