NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/8564

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-20 | 8.8 KB

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From: [e-mail] (Kerry Miller)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: RE ENQ: DeathPenalty Article
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Date: 20 Nov 92 21:47:22 GMT
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  Perhaps this is the piece someone was asking about recently.
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** Written  8:15 pm  May 25, 1992 by [e-mail] in
 cdp:justice.usa **
From: James P Laird <[e-mail]>
Subject: Racism in the Death Penalty


RACIAL DISCRIMINATION [in the application of the US Death Penalty]

*****************************************************************
     Between 1977 and 1986 nearly 90 per cent of prisoners
executed had been convicted of killing whites--although there
were nearly as many black victims as white ones.
*****************************************************************

     Some 48 per cent of the nation's death row population in 1985
were blacks or members of other minorities, although they made up
only 12 per cent of the population.  The proportion of blacks on
death row is much higher in some individual states:  in Alabama,
for example, 66 per cent of death row inmates are black.
     Although statistics on race of offender alone do not
necessarily indicate bias--given that roughly 50 per cent of all
those arrested for murder are black--wide disparities are revealed
when considering the race of the victim in death sentence cases.
Eighty-nine per cent (59) of the 66 prisoners executed between 1977
and September 1986 had been convicted of murdering whites, as had
77 per cent of death row prisoners nationally in 1985.  This
percentage is even higher in some southern states and appears to be
even more disproportionate since blacks and whites are victims of
homicide in roughly equal numbers.
     Blacks convicted of murdering whites have also been found to
be more frequently sentenced to death than any other category of
offender; whites on the other hand have only rarely been sentenced
to death for killing blacks.
     Although it is difficult to provide conclusive proof of racial
discrimination by using statistics, a number of research studies
have isolated race as a factor in death sentencing.
     One study compared statistics on all criminal homicides in
Florida, Georgia, Texas and Ohio from the dates their respective
post-1972 statutes came into effect (between 1973 and 1974) with
death sentences imposed up to December 1977.  Death sentences in
these four states accounted for 70 per cent of all death sentences
imposed nationally at this time.
     The researchers found that in Florida and Texas blacks who
killed whites were, respectively, five and six times more likely to
be sentenced to death than whites.  Among black offenders in
Florida, those who had killed whites were 40 times more likely to
get the death penalty than those who had killed blacks.  No white
offender in Florida had ever been sentenced to death for killing a
black person at that time.  The findings were similar in the other
two states.
     These results were consistent with the findings of a 1981
Florida study which showed that of 326 cases involving killings
between strangers in 1976 and 1977, 5.4 per cent of cases with
black victims resulted in a death sentence, compared to 14 per cent
of cases with white victims.  It also found that 53.6 per cent of
cases black-victim cases resulted in first degree murder
indictments, compared to 85 per cent of white-victim cases.

GEORGIA STUDY
     Studies of the operation of Georgia's capital sentencing
system, conducted by Professor David Baldus in the early 1980s have
provided the most detailed analysis of racial disparities in death
sentencing so far.  The research team aimed to discover why killers
of white victims in Georgia during the 1970s had received the death
penalty approximately 11 times more often than killers of blacks.
The team subjected each case to a series of rigorous tests,
matching the known facts against all possible factors which might
play a role in determining sentence--more than 230 control factors
were allowed for.
     Although the researchers found no significant racial
disparities in sentencing in the most highly aggravated cases (a
relatively small group of cases involving, for example, multiple
victims or torture), they did find significant racial disparities
among a much larger group of cases involving intermediate levels of
aggravation.  These were those in which prosecutors or juries had
most discretion in their charging or sentencing decisions.  Here it
was found that offenders with white victims were 20 per cent more
likely to receive a death sentence than those with black victims.
In fact, at this level the victim's race was a more important
determinant than several of Georgia's 10 statutory aggravating
circumstances, any one of which is sufficient to result in a death
sentence.  The team also found that at this level black defendants
were more likely to receive a death sentence that white defendants
in similar cases.

COURT FINDING
     The Georgia findings were used in support of an appeal to the
Eleventh Circuit Federal Court of Appeals on behalf of Warren
McCleskey, a black man sentenced to death for killing a white
Atlanta police officer.  He claimed that the discirminatory
application of Georgia's death penalty statute violated his
constitutional rights.  The court denied the appeal in January
1985.
     The court reviewed the Georgia study and did not dispute its
findings, stating:  "The statistics show there is a race-of-the-
victim relationship with the imposition of the death sentence
discernible enough in cases to be statistically significant in the
system as a whole".  However, it found that "the magnitude cannot
be called determinative in any given case".  The court also held
that, because there was no proof that the state had intentionally
discriminated against the defendant, there could be no
constitutional violation of his rights.  It went on to say:

     "The marginal disparity based on race of victim tends to
     support the state's contention that the system is working
     far differently from the one which Furman [the 1972 Supreme
     Court decision] condemned.  In pre-Furman days, there was
     no rhyme or reason as to who got the death penalty and who
     did not.  But now, in the vast majority of cases, the
     reasons for a difference are well-documented."

     The court appeared to be saying in effect that although it did
not dispute that there might be racial discrimination in the
application of the death penalty in Georgia, the present position
was better than that in pre-Furman days--that is, although the
application was unfair now, it was not as unfair as before.
     Three judges filed separate dissenting opinions.  One of them,
Judge Hatchett, found that the 20 per cent racial disparity among
the middle rage of cases, in which "decision on the proper sentence
is most difficult and the imposition of the death penalty most
questionable" was "intolerable".  He said:

     "To allow this system to stand is to concede that in a
     certain number of cases the consideration of race will
     be a factor in the decision whether to impose the death
     penalty..."

     The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal against the
decision.

[Inset, below a photograph]
     GEORGIA:  Alpha Otis Stephens, who had been convicted of
murdering a white man, was executed in Georgia in December 1984
while a federal appeals court was still reviewing two cases raising
allegations that Georgia's death penalty statute was racially
biased.  He had previously lodged appeals on the same issue and in
November 1983 the US Supreme Court had granted him a stay of
execution pending the resolution of one of the race cases before
the appeals court.  However, the Supreme Court suddenly lifted the
stay in November 1984.  It gave no explanation, although Alpha Otis
Stephens' lawyers believed it decision was based on purely
technical grounds--that he should have raised the racial bias issue
at an earlier stage of his appeals.

[Excerpted from:  USA The Death Penalty Briefing, p8, Amnesty
International Publications, 1 Easton Street, London WC1X 8DJ,
United Kingdom.  AI Index:  AMR 51/02/87  ISBN: 0-939994026-7.
To order the full breifing, more current information on the death
penalty, or other AI publications write to AI at either the above
address or to the AI section in your country.  In the USA the
write to AIUSA Publications, 322 Eighth Avenue, New York, NY 10001.]
** End of text from cdp:justice.usa **