NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/8537

Text File | 1992-11-19 | 5.1 KB | 95 lines

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From: Greg Dunkel <[e-mail]>
Subject:      re:death penalty
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Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <[e-mail]>
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 23:41:10 GMT
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Responding to the call for more information and pushed by the direction this
discussion is taking -- looking at the narrow point of whether or not a "white"
person has every been executed for killing a Black person rather than looking at
the racist nature of how the death penalty is applied -- I went to the library
night before last.

In poking around I came across a government document called "Death Penalty"
(Hearings of the Judiciary Committee of the Senate,Serial No. J-101-44, US
Govmnt Printing office 1991) and looked through it, searching for some
information that would be generally accepted as valid, since it was delivered
before our "elected" leaders.

It contains some testimony by Julius L. Chambers, the director of the NAACP
Legal Defense fund that he gave in 1989 and I would like to extract some
passages from it. (Please see the original for footnotes & references.)

In the introduction, he states "Our concern is generated by the stark reality
which black people have traditionally faced.  For more than three centuries, the
wight of the death penalty in this country has been borne far more heavily by
blacks than by whites.  Beginning in 1680, the colonies enacted Slave Codes,
which applied both to slaves and to free blacks."  These codes made conduct of
Black people that was legal for whites criminal and crimes for both were far
more harshly punished if a Black person was the perpetrator.

He continues, "After the Civil War and the passage of the 13th Amendment, Slave
Codes gave way to Black Codes, which continued their racially disciminatory
practices.  When the 14th Amendment abolished Black Codes, the practices
sanctioned by the Codes could no longer be maintained on the statute books;  yet
they continued to operate through the racial biases of prosecutors, judges, and
juries.  Discriminatory infliction of the death penalty upon black persons
convicted of crimes against white persons remained the hallmark of capital
punishment and the most expressive demonstration of a dual system of criminal
justice. ... That is still true today, a century later."

He goes on to describe the investigations of David Baldus and others into
Georgia's death sentencing process, after pointing out that up to 1972,
according to the US Justice Department, 2077 out of 3894 people who had been
executed or sentenced to death in the United Stateswere Black, that is, more
than 50 % of the death penalties were applied to members of a group of people
who have never been more than 20 % of the population of this country.

In Georgia, since executions resumed in 1977, "... 118 persons have been
executed.  Of them 48, or 41 percent, have been black;  100, or 84 percent, have
been executed for the murder of a white victim."

Chambers later says that Baldus studied 2500 Georgia homicide cases over a 6
year period.  Only 64 inolved killings of Black victims by white defendants; 3%
of those cases, that is, only in two case where a white person was convicted of
killing a Black personwas the death penalty imposed. However, "22 % of
black defendants who kill white victims are sentenced to death. 8 % of white
defendants who kill white victims are sentenced to death.  1 % of black
defendants who kill black victims are sentenced to death.  Plainly, the reason
why racial discrimination against black defendants does not appear even more
glaringly is because most black murderers kill black victims;  virtually nobody
-- black or white -- is sentenced to death for killing a black victim."

Now the Supreme Court in its decision that authorized the re-imposition of the
death penalty in Georgia agreed with Baldus that "racial bias is as influential
in the decision to impose the death penalty as important non-racial factors.
..."  But they held that the degree of racial bias was "constitutionally
tolerable"; after all, as it was originally written, the U.S.  Constitution
said chattel slavery was constitutional.

There have been additional studies of the death penalty in the U.S. and
comparison with other countries, like South Africa, and there might be
objections to this study, which is limited to a 6-year period in Georgia.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is one of the more conservative and cautious
civil rights organizations in the US, and I have heard criticisms of its
positions on a number of issues.  Others claim it generally reflects a
consensus opinion.

But the point I want to raise as clearly and forcefully as I can:  none of
these postings, none of these criticisms, none of these additional studies
challenge the racist application of the death penalty in the United States.

Let's not loose sight of that fact.

/Greg Dunkel [e-mail] [e-mail]