Study: Racial Disparities in Death Penalty Begin with Investigations and Arrests

A study of more than three decades of homi­cide arrests sug­gests that racial dis­par­i­ties in arrests and polic­ing prac­tices intro­duce an addi­tion­al lay­er of bias in the appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty in the United States. 

While ear­li­er research has doc­u­ment­ed that the race of vic­tims affects pros­e­cu­tors’ deci­sions to seek the death penal­ty, and juries’ and judges’ deci­sions to impose death sen­tences, a new study by Professors Jeffrey Fagan of Columbia University (pic­tured, left) and Amanda Geller of New York University (pic­tured, right) has found that those dis­par­i­ties appear even ear­li­er in the process, at the arrest stage. “[H]omicides with white vic­tims are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to be ​‘cleared’ by the arrest of a sus­pect than are homi­cides with minor­i­ty vic­tims,” the authors write. Since death-penal­ty pros­e­cu­tions must begin with an arrest in a cap­i­tal-eli­gi­ble mur­der, these clear­ance rates cre­ate a dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly larg­er pipeline of white-victim cases. 

Fagan and Geller exam­ined every homi­cide record­ed in the FBI’s Supplementary Homicide Reports from 1976 to 2009, uncov­er­ing coun­ty-lev­el pat­terns in the ​“clear­ance rate” (the rate at which cas­es are closed by the arrest of a sus­pect). Counties with high­er pro­por­tions of minor­i­ty res­i­dents had low­er clear­ance rates than coun­ties with whiter pop­u­la­tions, but the authors say that coun­ty char­ac­ter­is­tics alone do not com­plete­ly account for the dis­par­i­ties. Rather, they say that broad­er polic­ing prac­tices also play a role. 

“Inequalities in polic­ing, such as the under­polic­ing of the most seri­ous crimes in the most dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties, cou­pled with over­polic­ing of the least seri­ous offens­es in those same places, seem to extend to the ini­tial stages of the pro­duc­tion of death sen­tences and exe­cu­tions,” they write. They attribute the low­er clear­ance rates of black-vic­tim cas­es in part to dis­trust of police in com­mu­ni­ties of col­or, result­ing in less will­ing­ness to coop­er­ate in investigations. 

“Perceived injus­tices can dis­in­cen­tivize cit­i­zens from coop­er­at­ing with the police,” they explain, ​“includ­ing both ​‘pet­ty indig­ni­ties’ and egre­gious acts of police vio­lence.” Thus, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry polic­ing prac­tices con­tribute to dis­parate clear­ance rates, which in turn con­tribute to the dis­crim­i­na­to­ry appli­ca­tion of capital punishment.