STUDIES: Louisiana Death Penalty Staggeringly Error-Prone, Racially Biased

More than 80% of the 241 death sen­tences imposed in Louisiana since 1976 have been reversed on appeal, and one death row pris­on­er has been exon­er­at­ed for every three exe­cu­tions in the state, accord­ing to a new study by University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Professor Frank Baumgartner and sta­tis­ti­cian Tim Lyman. The study, to be pub­lished in the Southern University Law Center’s Journal of Race, Gender and Poverty, also reveals dra­mat­ic racial dis­par­i­ties in both the tri­al and appel­late stages of Louisiana death penalty proceedings. 

The study notes that 155 of the state’s 241 death sen­tences have reached a final res­o­lu­tion: either a rever­sal or an exe­cu­tion. Of these death sen­tences, there have been 28 exe­cu­tions (18.1%) and 127 rever­sals (81.9%) — includ­ing 9 exon­er­a­tions — giv­ing Louisiana a rever­sal rate nine per­cent­age points high­er than the 72.7% aver­age for death penal­ty cases nationwide. 

The researchers also found stark racial dis­par­i­ties in Louisiana’s death penal­ty relat­ed both to the race of the vic­tim and to the race of the defen­dant. Cases involv­ing white vic­tims were six times more like­ly to result in death sen­tences than cas­es involv­ing black vic­tims, and black male defen­dants charged with killing white female vic­tims were 30 times more like­ly to be sen­tenced to death than were black male defen­dants charged with killing black male victims. 

The study also found that appel­late courts were less like­ly to over­turn death sen­tences in cas­es involv­ing white vic­tims than those involv­ing black vic­tims, com­pound­ing the racial dis­par­i­ties already present in the sen­tenc­ing stage of the case. As a con­se­quence, a defen­dant charged with killing a white vic­tim was 14 times more like­ly to be exe­cut­ed than if the vic­tim was black. 

The last time Louisiana car­ried out the death penal­ty against a white per­son for a crime involv­ing a black per­son was in 1752, when the defen­dant was exe­cut­ed for dam­ag­ing the prop­er­ty of anoth­er white man by stab­bing two female slaves. The authors explained, ​“Race-of-vic­tim effects are pow­er­ful at each stage of the death penal­ty sys­tem, accu­mu­lat­ing as we move from the orig­i­nal sen­tence through to execution.”

Baumgartner said of his find­ings, ​“We have to look the death penal­ty in the eye and under­stand how it tru­ly does func­tion. Not how we wished it func­tioned but how it real­ly does func­tion. And every time we do that, it real­ly is dis­turb­ing.” (Click here to enlarge image, image by The New Orleans Advocate.)