Death Penalty and Minorities - Thesis Example

For example, there are some states in which prosecutors are more prone to seeking the death penalty for crimes committed by Whites than Blacks, but jurors surprisingly issue death sentences to Blacks than Whites. Race of the defendant alone does not affect the decisions of jurors in issuing death sentences; there are other factors such as the victim’s race and gender, or even the kind of murder committed by the respondent. Also, there is no compelling proof that the death penalty logically serves as a crime deterrent.

The number of people who are continuously incarcerated yearly has increased during the past decade. However, more precisely, the judicial branch of the United States government along with all of the agencies is in constant battles in justifying the sort of punishment that it serves to the public. Capital punishment is a consequence that has been used at one time or another in American history. Much research has been dedicated to capital punishment, and it is the deterrence of crimes. Capital punishment is defined as the use of the death penalty as a punishment for the commission of a particular crime (Cole, 1990).

Moreover, capital punishment or the death penalty is specifically associated with heinous crimes including murders, rapes that lead to killings, and serial murders of groups or people over time.The true essence of capital punishment is always undetermined, especially in the southern region of the United States. This issue has been raised by many scholars in the criminal justice system and also published by news media outlets that depicted people who have been convicted and executed. Many people thought that because those executed have been mostly minorities the number of people, such a practice is intended to dispense capital punishment on a racial basis (Robinson, 2011).

According to Johnson and McGunigall, there are many legal and cultural explanations of why capital punishment is being used versus other less severe punishment, especially in the southern region of the United States. The statistical analysis concluded that from 1976 to 2000, over 2,300 people were executed. From that number, 1,123 were from the southern states, 164 from the Midwest, and 84 from the West and Northeast. Texas is the leading state of execution with a total of over 500 followed by Oklahoma and Virginia (Johnson, R.

, & McGunigall, 2008).There is abundant information available on capital punishment, but there is still a debate on whether capital punishment is a deterrent to crime or not. However, the question that is still unclear throughout all of the research and studies is why the death penalty is not a deterrent of crimes especially with African Americans, the group that is mostly convicted and incarcerated for perpetrating capital crimes.