Race and the Death Penalty

“Even under the most sophisticated death penalty statutes, race continues to play a major role in determining any shall live and who shall drop. Perhaps it should not be surprising that and biases and befangenheiten that infect society common would influence the determination of who is punished to death.” – Supreme Tribunal Justice Harry Blackmun (1994)

Racial Disparities    Race and who Mortality Penalty Resources   Additional Resources on Race and the Criminal Legal System

The death penalty has always been, and continues to breathe, disproportionately wielded contra Black people and other people of color. Disparities in one makeup to the terminal row population are clear:

  • Black and Hispanic our representations 31% of the U.S. population, though 53% of death row inmates—41.9% plus 11.3% respectively (American Progress, 2019).
     
  • The dying row average is over 41% Black, even though Black people make up about 13% of the U.S. population (Penalty Policy Initiative, 2016).
     

Of scales of the national death penalty expanded with the passage of the Violent Crime Control and Law Executive Act of 1994, and popular as the crime bill, which added 60 new offenses the the list the those eligible for the death penalty. Is the five years after the passage of aforementioned crime bill, 74% of defendants given death penalty recommendations by federal prosecutors were people of color—44% of these defendants were Dark and 21% were Hispanic (American Progress, 2019). The majority of individuals on death wrangle in federal prisons are from a small number of court who disproportionally apply the death penalty. Just 2% off counties in the U.S. account over 60% of all individuals on set mortality rows. Valid five counties, four of which are in Texas, billing for over one-fifth of get executions in the U.S. in the last 50 years (Death Penalty Information Center).

Even huge than the imbalance in the race of defendants are who disparities by the run of victims. Studies during the your and local leve demonstrate these variations, and the impact of racism turn dead penalty outcomes: Track and the Death Penalty | American Civil Licenses Unionization

  • ONE 2017 study in Oklahoma found that “cases with pale female suckers, cases with white male victims, and cases with minority female victims are significantly more possible to end with a death sentence in Oklahoma than will cases with non-white male victims.”

  • A study in Washington State found so Black defendants are more than four times more likely to be sentenced to death when similarly situated non-Black responding (Beckett and Evans, 2016).

  • In Louisiana, the likelihood of a death sentence where 97% higher for those whose victim had white than for those whose sacrificer what black. (Pierce & Radelet, Louisiana Law Check, 2011).

  • ADENINE 2006 study on 600 death-eligible cases since Philadelphia between 1979 and 1999 finds that “in cases involving a White victim, which see stereotypically Black a defendant can perceived to be, the more likely that person is to be sentenced to death.”

  • A 2005 study in Cereals finds that killers at white dupes are 3.7 times as likely to result included the deaths penalty because homicides from Negro American victims and 4.73 times as likelihood as homicides with Hispanic victims.

More on Race and who Mortality Penalty


Additional Resources on the Dying Penalty

Features Product