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- Sam Houston State University, Huntsville
- CJ 478W-Introduction To Methods Of Research
-
-
- The Effects of Race on Sentencing in Capital Punishment Cases
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- Throughout history, minorities have been ill-represented in
- the criminal justice system, particularly in cases where the
- possible outcome is death. In early America, blacks were lynched
- for the slightest violation of informal laws and many of these
- killings occured without any type of due process. As the judicial
- system has matured, minorities have found better representation but
- it is not completely unbiased. In the past twenty years strict
- controls have been implemented but the system still has symptoms of
- racial bias. This racial bias was first recognized by the Supreme
- Court in Fruman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). The Supreme
- Court Justices decide that the death penalty was being handed out
- unfairly and according to Gest (1996) the Supreme Court felt the
- death penalty was being imposed ôfreakishlyÆ and æwantonlyö and
- ômost often on blacks.ö Several years later in Gregg v. Georgia,
- 428 U.S. 153 (1976), the Supreme Court decided, with efficient
- controls, the death penalty could be used constitutionally. Yet,
- even with these various controls, the system does not effectively
- eliminate racial bias.
- Since Gregg v. Georgia the total population of all 36 death
- rows has grown as has the number of judicial controls used by each
- state. Of the 3,122 people on death row 41% are black while 48%
- are white (Gest, 1996, 41). This figure may be acceptable at first
- glance but one must take into account the fact that only 12% of the
- U.S. population is black (Smolowe, 1991, 68). Carolyn Snurkowski
- of the Florida attorney generals office believes that the
- disproportionate number of blacks on death row can be explained by
- the fact that, ôMany black murders result from barroom brawls that
- wouldnÆt call for the death penalty, but many white murders occur
- on top of another offense, such as robberyö (As cited in Gest,
- 1986, 25). This may be true but the Washington Legal Foundation
- offers their own explanation by arguing that ôblacks are arrested
- for murder at a higher rate than are whites. When arrest totals
- are factored in , æthe probability of a white murderer ending up on
- death row is 33 percent greater than in the case of a black
- murdererö (As cited in Gest, 1986, 25).
- According to Professor Steven Goldstein of Florida State
- University, ôThere are so many discretionary stages: whether the
- prosecutor decides to seek the death penalty, whether the jury
- recommends it, whether the judge gives itö (As cited in Smolowe,
- 1991, 68). It is in these discretionary stages that racial biases
- can infect the system of dealing out death sentences. Smolowe
- (1991) shows this infection by giving examples of two cases decided
- in February of 1991, both in Columbus. The first example is a
- white defendant named James Robert Caldwell who was convicted of
- stabbing his 10 year old son repeatedly and raping and killing his
- 12 year old daughter. The second example is of a black man, Jerry
- Walker, convicted of killing a 22-year-old white man while robbing
- a convenience-store. CaldwellÆs trial lasted three times as long
- as WalkerÆs and Caldwell received a life sentence while Walker
- received a death sentence. In these examples, it is believed that
- not only the race of the victims, but also the value of the
- victims, biased the sentencing decisions. The 22-year-old man
- killed by Walker was the son of a Army commander at Fort Benning
- while CaldwellÆs victims were not influential in the community. In
- examples such as these, it becomes evident that racial bias, in any
- or all of the discretionary stages, becomes racial injustice in the
- end. Smolowe (1991) also makes the point that Columbus is not
- alone: ôA 1990 report prepared by the governmentÆs General
- Accounting Office found æa pattern of evidence indicating racial
- disparities in the charging, sentencing and imposition of the death
- penalty.ö
- In an article by Seligman (1994), Professor Joseph Katz of
- Georgia State ôand other scholars have made a separate point about
- bias claims based on the ædevalued livesÆ of murder victims.ö
- Seligman also asserts that those claiming bias believe that it is
- in the race of the victim and not the race of the defendant, and
- because the lives of blacks have been ôdevalued,Æ people who murder
- blacks are less likely to receive death sentences than those who
- murder whitesö (Seligman, 1994, 113). An Iowa Law Professor, David
- Baldus, also found that ôjuries put a premium on the lives of
- victimsö (As cited in Lacayo, 1987, 80). In a study of more than
- 2,000 Georgia murder cases, Baldus found that ôthose who killed
- whites were 4.3 times as likely to receive the death penalty as
- those who killed blacks. And blacks who killed whites were most
- likely of all to be condemned to dieö (As cited in Lacayo, 1987,
- 80). According to Gest (1996), of those executed since the
- reinstatement of the death penalty, 80% have murdered whites, while
- only 12% of those executed in the same time period have had black
- victims. These figures show an obvious trend of racial bias
- against those who murdered whites. Could these disparities be
- because, as sociologist Michael Radelet put it, ôProsecutors are
- political animals, they are influenced by community outrage, which
- is subtly influenced by race,ö or is it because ôit is built into
- the system that those in the predominant race will be more
- concerned about crime victims of their own race,ö as stated by
- Welsh White of the University of Pittsburgh Law School (As cited in
- Gest, 1986, 25).
- Because of the immense possibility of discrimination in
- sentencing in capital punishment cases, each stage of prosecution
- must be controlled as much as possible. Although these
- offenders are the worst the criminal justice system has to offer,
- prosecutors must be encouraged to consider the crime and not the
- race of the victim or offender and the judge must attempt to
- exclude the same racial issue when deciding the punishment. I
- believe Justice Brennan said it best when he wrote the dissenting
- opinion in a capital punishment appeal. He wrote, ôIt is tempting
- to pretend that minorities on death row share a fate in no way
- connected to our own, that our treatment of them sounds no echoes
- beyond the chambers in which they die. Such an illusion is
- ultimately corrosive, for the reverberations of injustice are not
- so easily confinedö (As cited in Lacayo, 1987, 80). With great
- effort, the judicial controls can begin to battle the racial bias
- of Americas Judicial system but to completely eliminate such a
- bias, the people involved in the judicial process must learn to
- look past the race of the offender or the value of the victim, and
- instead focus on circumstances of the crime.
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