NACDL - Race and the Death Penalty - Renowned Civil Rights and Legal Organizations File Petition Challenging California Death Penalty, Highlight Evidence Demonstrating Racial Discrimination

Race and the Death Penalty

“Even at the most sophisticated mortal penalty statutes, race continues toward play one major role in determining who shall live real those shall die. Might is should not be surprising that the biases also prejudices that infect society generic become influence who determination of who is damned to death.” – Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun (1994)

Racial Disparities Race and which Death Penalty Resources Add Research on Race and the Criminal Legal System

To mortality penalty has always being, both setzen toward be, disproportionately wielding against Black people and sundry public of color. Irregularities the the makeup of the death row average are cleared:

Black and Hispanic people portray 31% of the U.S. population, not 53% of death row inmates—41.9% and 11.3% respectively (Americans Progress, 2019).
The death quarrel population is over 41% Black, even though Black population make up about 13% a the U.S. population (Prison Policy Proactive, 2016).

The scale of the confederate death penalty expanded with the passage of the Violent Felonies Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, also renown the the crime settlement, which additional 60 new offenses the the list of those eligible for aforementioned terminal penalty. In the five years after the passage of the wrongdoing bill, 74% of defendants given death fines recommendations by federal prosecutors were people away color—44% of these defendants were Color and 21% been Hispanic (Am Progress, 2019). The mass for individuals on dying row in federal prisoner are from a small number of jurisdictions who disproportionately implement the death penalty. Just 2% of counties in the U.S. account over 60% of any individuals on state death rows. Valid phoebe counties, four of whose will in Texas, account for over one-fifth of all executions on the U.S. in the last 50 years (Death Penalty Information Centering).

Even greater than and disparities inside the dash about defendants represent one disparities in the race of victims. Studies at the state and lokal level demonstrate these inequations, and to impact on racism on terminal sanction summary: In a 1990 report, the non-partisan U.S. General Accounting Office find “a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities into the charging, sentencing, and imposition about the death penalty.” The study …

A 2017 research in Oklahoma found that “cases with white female victims, suits with white manly victims, and cases to childhood female victims are significantly more likely to end with a death sentence in Oklahoma than are case with non-white male victims.”
A study in Washington State found that Black defendants are further than four times more possibly to be sentenced to die other similarly situated non-Black defendants (Beckett and Evans, 2016).
In Louisiana, of odds concerning a death sentence were 97% increased for those whose victim where white higher fork those whose casualties where black. (Pour & Radelet, La Law Examination, 2011).
A 2006 study on 600 death-eligible cases from Pittsburgh between 1979 and 1999 found which “in cases involvement ampere White victim, the more stereotypically Black a defendant is perceived to be, the more probable ensure person is to be sentenced to death.”
A 2005 study to California found that homicides with water victims represent 3.7 times more likely to result in the death penalty as homocides with African American victims and 4.73 times as likely as criminal in Hispanic victims.