STUDY: In Oklahoma, Race and Gender of Victim Significantly Affect Death Penalty

A new study of more than two decades of mur­ders in Oklahoma has found that defen­dants charged with killing a white woman have odds of being sen­tenced to death in the Sooner State that are near­ly ten times greater than if they had been charged with killing a man who is a racial minority.

The study, pub­lished in the Fall 2017 issue of the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law’s Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, exam­ined more than 4,600 Oklahoma homi­cide cas­es over a 23-year peri­od between January 1, 1990, and December 31, 2012 in which a sus­pect had been iden­ti­fied, includ­ing 153 cas­es in which a death sen­tence had been imposed. The researchers—research sci­en­tist Dr. Glenn L. Pierce (pic­tured, left) and pro­fes­sors Michael L. Radelet (pic­tured, right) and Susan Sharp — found ​“large dis­par­i­ties in the odds of a death sen­tence” that they said ​“cor­re­late with the gen­der and the race/​ethnicity of the victim.”

Among oth­er find­ings, the study deter­mined that there was ​“a strong cor­re­la­tion” between the race of the vic­tim and the prob­a­bil­i­ty that the death penal­ty would be imposed, with cas­es involv­ing white vic­tims ​“sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to end with a death sen­tence than cas­es with non­white vic­tims.” Among all mur­ders, cas­es with white vic­tims were the most like­ly to result in death sen­tences (3.92% of cas­es), fol­lowed by killings of Latino vic­tims (2.67%), black vic­tims (1.87%), and Native-American vic­tims (1.26%). Overall, white-vic­tim cas­es were more than twice as like­ly as cas­es involv­ing black vic­tims or non-white vic­tims as a whole to end in a death ver­dict and more than three times as like­ly to result in a death sen­tence as cas­es with Native-American victims. 

The study also found sig­nif­i­cant vic­tim-gen­der dis­par­i­ties, with mur­ders involv­ing at least one female vic­tim more like­ly to result in a death sen­tence than other cases. 

The com­bi­na­tion of race and gen­der pro­duced even more pro­found dis­par­i­ties in death-sen­tenc­ing rates. The odds that a death sen­tence would be imposed were near­ly 10 times greater (9.59 times) in cas­es with white female vic­tims than in cas­es with minor­i­ty male vic­tims; 8.68 times greater in cas­es with minor­i­ty female vic­tims than in cas­es with minor­i­ty male vic­tims; and more than triple (3.22 times greater) in cas­es with white male vic­tims than in cas­es with minor­i­ty male victims. 

While the study found that the defendant’s race by itself did not cor­re­late with a death sen­tence, the prob­a­bil­i­ty of a death sen­tence for a non­white defen­dant charged with killing a white vic­tim (5.8%) was more than triple the prob­a­bil­i­ty of a death sen­tence for a white defen­dant charged with killing a non-white vic­tim (1.8%).

After spend­ing more than a year study­ing Oklahoma’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment prac­tices — includ­ing a draft ver­sion of the researchers’ study — the bipar­ti­san Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission issued a report unan­i­mous­ly rec­om­mend­ing that Oklahoma con­tin­ue its mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions ​“until sig­nif­i­cant reforms are accom­plished.” Two African-American death-row pris­on­ers, Julius Darius Jones and Tremane Wood, have argued based upon that draft of the study, that Oklahoma’s death penal­ty uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly dis­crim­i­nates on the basis of race.

The three researchers have long been involved in death-penal­ty stud­ies. Glenn Pierce is Principal Research Scientist in Northeastern University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and the Co-Director of the University’s Institute for Security and Public Policy. Michael Radelet is Professor of Sociology and Faculty Associate in the Institute of Behavioral Sciences at the University of Colorado-Boulder. Susan Sharp is the David Ross Boyd Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma.