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 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
Jun 22, 2023
DPIC Releases New Report on How the History of Racial Violence and Discrimination Have Shaped the Death Penalty in Tennessee
The Death Penalty Information Center’s new report on race and the death penalty in Tennessee places the state’s death penalty system in historical context, documenting how racial discrimination and racial violence continue to influence the administration of the death penalty. Doomed to Repeat: The Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty, released June 22, 2023, notes that as the Tennessee Department of Correction develops new lethal injection protocols and prepares to resume executions, the state may find it useful to understand how Tennessee arrived at its current capital punishment system.
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Mar 28, 2024
OP-ED: Black Woman Denied Opportunity to Serve as a Juror in Georgia Capital Trial Cites Concerns About Racial Bias
In a March 26, 2024, op-ed published in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Patricia McTier, a Georgia nurse, recounts her experience being removed from a jury pool in 1998 for what she calls a “questionable reason” related to her race. Born and raised in Appling County, Georgia, Ms. McTier grew up in the Jim Crow era and writes that she “enter[ed] adulthood during a time of great social change,” where she grew to “cherish our American system of justice and the Constitution that endows all of us with equal rights.” In September…
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Mar 14, 2024
North Carolina Racial Justice Act Hearing Concludes in Hasson Bacote Case
On Friday, March 8, 2024 a Johnston County trial court concluded a historic hearing regarding the claims of Hasson Bacote, a death-sentenced prisoner in North Carolina, that racial discrimination in jury selection played a role in his 2009 capital sentencing. The case, which is being reviewed pursuant to North Carolina’s 2009 Racial Justice Act (RJA), could have implications for more than 100 other death row prisoners who have pending claims under the Act.
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Mar 08, 2024
Women’s History Month Profile: U.S. District Court Judge Natasha Merle
This month, DPIC celebrates Women’s History Month with weekly profiles of notable women whose work was significant in the modern death penalty era. The first entry in this series is U.S. District Court Judge Natasha Merle.
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Mar 07, 2024
Georgia Sets March 20 Execution Date for Willie Pye Despite Strong Evidence of Intellectual Disability and Previous Finding of Ineffective Representation by Attorney with History of Racial Bias
The Georgia Attorney General has announced that Willie James Pye, who previously had his death sentence reversed due to his attorney’s failure to investigate his background, only to see the death sentence reinstated on appeal, is set to be executed on March 20. Mr. Pye’s court-appointed trial attorney, Johnny Mostiler, has been accused of ineffective representation or racial bias in at least four cases involving Black defendants and reportedly called one of his own clients a “little n****r.” Mr. Pye also has “undisputed” signs of intellectual disability, with an IQ…
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Feb 29, 2024
Black History Month Profile Series: Elaine Jones
This month, DPIC celebrates Black History Month with weekly profiles of notable Black Americans whose work affected the modern death penalty era. The fourth and final entry in this series is lawyer and civil rights activist Elaine Jones, former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and counsel of record in Furman v. Georgia.
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Feb 28, 2024
New Report from Texas Defender Service Examines Ongoing Racial Disparities in Harris County Death Penalty Practices and Recommends Reforms
A new report from the Texas Defender Service (TDS) titled “Arbitrary and Capricious: Examining Racial Disparities in Harris County’s Pursuit of Death Sentences” was published on February 22, 2024 and is the latest in series of TDS reports on use of the death penalty in Texas. The report focuses on Harris County’s outlier death penalty practices, both within the state and nationally. While more than half of the 254 counties in Texas have never imposed a death sentence, Harris County is responsible for most of the state’s current death row…
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Feb 27, 2024
States’ Failure to Collect Juror Race Information Contributes to “Whitewashed” Jury Box, Berkeley Law Report Finds
A new report from Berkeley Law’s Death Penalty Clinic finds that just 19 states collect race and ethnicity information from prospective jurors, meaning that a majority of states cannot ensure that their juries are a “representative cross-section of the community” as mandated by the Constitution. The report, Guess Who’s Coming to Jury Duty?, recommends that all states “adopt a uniform questionnaire” to obtain prospective jurors’ race or ethnicity and that state courts annually publish “aggregated, anonymized race/ethnicity data” for litigants and researchers investigating jury composition. The work builds on the…
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Feb 26, 2024
North Carolina Trial Court Will Hear New Evidence of Racial Bias in Death Row Prisoner’s Racial Justice Act Claim
Beginning February 28, 2024, a Johnston County, North Carolina, trial court will hear death row prisoner Hasson Bacote’s claims that racial discrimination in jury selection played a role in his capital sentencing. In 2009, North Carolina passed the Racial Justice Act (RJA), which allowed death-sentenced prisoners to challenge their sentences if they could demonstrate that race played a role in their sentencing and jury selection. Sentenced to death in 2009 by a nearly all-white jury, Mr. Bacote, and nearly all other death row prisoners in the state, filed a claim…
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Feb 20, 2024
Op-Ed: Law Professor Stephen Bright Encourages SCOTUS to Review “Egregious Racial Discrimination” in Georgia Death Row Prisoner’s Case
In a February 14, 2024 op-ed published in the Washington Post, the longtime defense lawyer, former director of the Southern Center for Human Rights, and law professor Stephen Bright highlights the continued illegal exclusion of Black jurors in violation of Batson v. Kennedy (1986). The op-ed titled, “Struck from a jury for being Black? It still happens all too often,” uses the case of Georgia death-sentenced prisoner Warren King, whose petition the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to review on February 23, as the latest example of the persistent practice. “The…
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Feb 16, 2024
Black History Month Profile Series: Jennifer Eberhardt
This month, DPIC celebrates Black History Month with weekly profiles of notable Black Americans whose work affected the modern death penalty era. The second in the series is Professor Jennifer Eberhardt.
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