STUDIES: Military Death Sentence More Likely for Defendants of Color

A recent study pub­lished in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology about the U.S. Military death penal­ty sys­tem found that racial dis­par­i­ties among those sen­tenced to death are worse in the mil­i­tary than in oth­er crim­i­nal courts. The study, con­duct­ed by Catherine Grosso of Michigan State’s College of Law, the late David Baldus of the University of Iowa College of Law, and oth­ers, reviewed all poten­tial­ly death-eli­gi­ble mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tions from 1984 to 2005 and iden­ti­fied 105 death-eli­gi­ble mur­der cas­es. The study found that defen­dants of col­or in the mil­i­tary are twice as like­ly as white defen­dants to be sen­tenced to death. The researchers said the dis­par­i­ties against defen­dants of col­or ​“sharply dis­tin­guish­es the mil­i­tary sys­tem from the typ­i­cal civil­ian sys­tem” at a ​“mag­ni­tude that is rarely seen in court sys­tems.” In typ­i­cal stud­ies on the civil­ian side, the like­li­hood of a death sen­tence increased when the vic­tim in the under­ly­ing crime was white, and was even more pro­nounced if the defen­dant was a per­son of col­or. In U.S. mil­i­tary courts, how­ev­er, dis­crim­i­na­tion based on the race of defen­dant — regard­less of the race of vic­tim — was more promi­nent. The researchers argued that lim­it­ing the mil­i­tary death penal­ty to the most aggra­vat­ed and heinous crimes — e.g., mur­der of a com­mis­sioned offi­cer or a pre­med­i­tat­ed attack on U.S. troops result­ing in death — would reduce racial dis­par­i­ties. Grosso con­clud­ed, ​“If race is on the table, if it puts a thumb on the scale, that’s injus­tice. These find­ings speak for them­selves. They reflect how the mil­i­tary crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem is oper­at­ing, and it can do bet­ter.” Read the Study.

(“Study: Military death sen­tence more like­ly for minori­ties,” Michigan State University News, February 17, 2012; C. Grosso et al., RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN THE ADMINISTRATION OF THE DEATH PENALTY: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES (1984 – 2005), 101 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 1227 (2012)). See Race and U.S. Military. Read more death penal­ty stud­ies.