Racial Disparity in Criminal Justice - Essay Example

Running head: Racial Disparity in Criminal Justice The death penalty is one of the most contentious topics and only those damned to the wages of this indisputable sin surpass it. Minorities like Hispanics, Latinos and African-Americans aggregate this ongoing barrage of prejudice. There is a rapid escalation of racial disparity with criminal laws being enforced in a pervasively and extremely biased manner. This paper discusses the issue of racial disparity in the death penalty. Examining several cases of criminal justice policies in the United States, it shows that to date, racial disparity exists. It also shows how the issue has had the most adverse effect on minorities. The greatest racial disparities arise in states where minorities are concentrated in urban areas, where there are higher crime rates and greater activity of law enforcement. Introduction Death penalty or execution is the most severe sentence that the United States and other countries use particularly for rape and murder cases. Military laws and federal states have also bestowed capital punishment for other crimes like espionage, treason, kidnapping, desertion from military service and robbery. The fact that state prisons are full of a disparate number of inmates who are people of color and who are on death row is a clear indication of racial disparity in sentencing. In other words, today’s capital punishment is a system that vents the anger of society over crime crisis on a select group. As far as death penalty is concerned, the contagious existence of racism has not slackened with time and this crisis is not confined in one area. One of the possible causes for this abiding problem is that the juries who make the critical decisions on death penalty in the United States are almost exclusively white. An empirical study at Law School in St. Marys University indicates that in the U.S, there is only one percent African-American District Attorneys in counties that use the death penalty while the other chief District Attorneys are white with a percentage of almost ninety-eight. This is a clear indication that racism infects jury selection. A 1986 training video released in 1997 shows a District Attorney candidate instructing prosecutors in Philadelphia to leave out people of color from juries in order to raise the conviction chances. Although the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed such exclusion in 1986, they are still prevalent throughout the United States (Dieter, 2009). To demonstrate the intensity of racism where nearly all white prosecutors make the decisions that pertain to which defendant dies and which one lives along racial lines, Dieter gives an example of a case in Missouri. Here, a Judge, while leading a case with death penalty against an African-American defendant who was unemployed signed press release regarding his judicial election and proclaimed his new association with the Republican Party. He quotes the press release to have stated that the Democrat party greatly emphasized on representing minorities who according to them were people whose skin color is anything but white and people who do not like working. The judge denied a motion to recuse himself from the trial and the court convicted and sentenced the defendant to death in 1996, which Missouris Supreme Court affirmed. The United States’ Supreme Court virtually abolished capital punishment in Furman v. Georgia in 1972 because ostensibly, they were greatly unfair and inconsistent. Here, on a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court ruled that juries administered death penalty in an arbitrary manner comprising unusual and cruel punishment. In the majority of the justices, the word arbitrary referred to numerical disparities. They argued that a legal basis for demarcating the few defendants sentenced to death from many other offenders who committed crimes that were equally reprehensible yet did not face execution, did not exist. However, two justices, Marshall and Douglas as well used the word arbitrary to allude to racial disparities in imposing death penalty. Following the decision by the Supreme Court in Furman, states started revising their laws and re-establishing death penalty. Some did away with arbitrariness by making capital punishment mandatory for offenders found guilty of certain crimes. Others took on guided discretion, an approach that narrowed down to specific range of crimes that were entitled to execution. This approach also detached a capital trial’s phases of guilt and sentencing in addition to requiring an automatic appellate capital punishments’ review. In 1976 however, the Supreme Court endorsed a new generation of capital laws assuring equal justice. These promises have proved futile, as racial disparity is still evident at the core of death penalty (Dieter, 2009). In the 1976 cases of Roberts v. Louisiana and Woodson v. North Carolina, the Supreme Court abolished mandatory death laws. It argued that human dignity protection required the consideration of each case individually. However, the Court maintained guided discretion laws in the 1976 cases of Gregg v. Georgia, Jurek v. Texas and Proffitt v. Florida marking the commencement of the modern age of death penalty. In a little while, guided discretion laws propagated when states passed legislation that would conform to the Gregg ruling. After the 1976 decision of the Supreme Court in Gregg, social scientists began examining if guided discretion eradicated racial influence on death penalty. To date, CSS (Charging and Sentencing Study) and PRS (Procedural Reform Study) by Baldus, Pulaski and Woodworth are the most significant and thorough research on the topic (Scott, 2008). Bedau and his co-author point out that between 1975 and 2000, 70% of those people who faced the death penalty in Alabama were African Americans and that of Alabama’s death row prisoners, eighty percent have been sentenced for killing white victims. They add that one of the most important predictors of who faces the death penalty in Alabama is the victim’s race as well as that of the defendant. To them, there is obvious bias in capital proceedings. On the federal level, racial disparity patterns in death penalty are striking. A current study of federal murder cases by Justice Department revealed that from 1995 to 2000, seventy-four per cent of the offenders were people of color. In Philadelphia, an investigation of race and capital punishment discloses that if the defendant is black, the chances of facing execution are almost 4 times higher. In other words, for similar crimes, African Americans receive the death penalty excessively compared to other defendants. A study in Georgia revealed that out of ten offenders sentenced to capital punishment for killing a white person, six would not have faced execution if their victim were a person of color. In Maryland, in a white victim case, the likelihood of capital punishment is eight times more as compared to a case where the victim is a person of color (Dieter, 2009). In 2008, Scott and his research assistants conducted a reasonably well controlled study on race and capital punishment in Texas, one of the United States’ most active death states. As defined by Baldus and Woodworth, a well-controlled study is one that has statistical controls for ten or more genuine non-racial case characteristics. This current study scrutinizes the effect of race on the decision of the District Attorney to pursue capital punishment and the decision of the jury to execute adult defendants charged with capital murder in Texas, particularly in Harris County. The central claim of the study is that racial disparities exist. Nevertheless, the author maintains that this claim does not imply that judicial actors have the intention of discriminating. Concerning this claim, he argues that one cannot establish whether disparities are conscious or unconscious, deliberate or accidental using scientific methods because one cannot observe human motivations. The findings of the study challenge conventional perception by proposing that in the capital of death penalty, both the victim’s race and defendant’s race are pivotal – there was more likelihood of imposing death against defendants of color than against white defendants and on behalf of white victims than victims of color. The colored-white disparities originate from a captivating interplay between the seriousness of a murder, the stages of capital proceedings and race. The study also attempts to extend traditional colored versus white comparisons to incorporate Hispanics but it revealed no Hispanic versus white disparities (Scott, 2008). Aclu.org presents a paper detailing the extremely disquieting proof that racial disparities still prevail in the contemporary federal capital punishment. The paper argues that non-white defendants constitute the best part of federal death row and of contemporary federal death penalties. In addition, today’s Attorney Generals pronounce capital punishment at higher rates in cases where the victim is white with the possibility of through plea bargaining, reducing white federal defendants’ death charges to life sentences. As proof for these arguments, the paper asserts that most of the defendants who have faced capital punishment in the contemporary federal capital punishment era are people of color. It points out that of the three men executed in the United States’ contemporary federal capital punishment era; two were men of color. Furthermore, for white defendants, there has been a reduction of capital punishment to life imprisonment through plea bargains at nearly double the rate as for non-white defendants. Here, it cites a United States’ Department of Justice research of the federal death penalty conducted in 2000 that discovered that a larger proportion of white offenders managed to escape from capital punishment by means of plea bargains compared to Hispanic or Black defendants. The study indicates that only twenty-eight percent of Hispanic offenders and twenty-five percent of Black offenders pled to life imprisonment while forty-eight percent of white offenders got a verdict less than death through plea bargains. The paper further asserts that the federal death penalty shows favoritism based on the victim’s race arguing there is greater possibility that in cases concerning white victims, United States’ Attorney Generals will seek capital punishment as opposed to in cases concerning people of color. It further argues that this problem is getting bad. It cites an example of a case where an Attorney General called Reno, out of every five cases, approved capital punishment if there was no white victim but if at least one victim was white, out of every three cases, she approved the capital punishment in more than one cases. Put differently, if a victim was white, a federal defendant’s chances of facing execution went from one out of five to one out of three. Concerning another Attorney General called Gonzales, the paper asserts that by 2007, in every six cases with victims of color, he had authorized capital punishment in only one while he authorized capital punishment in one out of every two cases where the victim was white (Aclu.org, 2008). This disproportionate authorization is a clear indication that the federal government values a white person’s life compared to that of a person of color. Consequently, the paper recommends that Congress should finance a comprehensive research of the federal capital punishment and racial disparities in it. Among other issues, this research should scrutinize why juries select cases for federal rather than state prosecution and why they select cases for capital punishment. The Congress should also pass a legal code necessitating the Justice Department to supply information on implementation of the federal capital punishment frequently, with statistical facts regarding the defendants’ and victims’ race in cases presented and recommended for death penalties. It also suggests that the Congress should execute an instantaneous moratorium on federal prosecutions and executions until it is sure that it can implement federal capital punishment without racial disparity. The Congress should as well implement a federal racial justice act allowing the use of statistical evidence by capital defendants as evidence of racial discrimination. Presently, in civil rights proceedings, although federal law permits an employee to use statistical evidence as proof of bias, it does not allow a capital offender to use convincing statistical evidence to challenge his execution charge of racial disparity. This Act would ensure that for federal defendants, the subject of life or death does not turn on the victim or the defendant’s race (Aclu.org, 2008). Conclusion The human cost of racial disparity is incalculable and capital punishment symbolizes the effects of racial disparity. Its outcomes include systematically barring jurors of color from being in service, devoting more resources to white homicide victims to the detriment of victims of color and it results in a death penalty whereby often, non-whites face execution for murdering whites with almost no execution of whites for murdering non-whites. In spite of overwhelming evidence of racial disparity in death penalty, some critics claim its absence, which is an enormous canard. Moreover, courts have responded by denying relief arguing that racial disparities’ patterns in individual cases are inadequate in proving racial bias. Some legislatures are now turning to corrective measures for fear of entirely stopping capital punishment. Concerning the death penalty, legislatures on both the state and federal level have failed to pass laws on civil rights. This is despite the prior example of legislation reacting to related discrimination in areas such as housing and employment. There is no way people can adhere to equal justice under the law whilst the state ignores such racial disparity in the death penalty (Dieter, 2009). In reality, justice is supposed to be blind – it ought not to be dispensed in relation to the victim and defendant’s social characteristics but in relation to the lawful characteristics of a case. However, for many years, studies on race and death penalty show that blind justice is just a mirage. References Aclu.org, (2008): The Persistent Problem of Racial Disparities in The Federal Death Penalty. Retrieved November 7, 2009, from http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/capital/racial_disparities_federal_deathpen.pdf. Bedau, H. A. & Cassell, P.G. (2005): Debating the death penalty: should America have capital punishment? Retrieved November 6, 2009, from http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=zZCwuyqX2xYC&pg=PA87&lpg=PA87&dq=Existence+of+Racial+Disparity+in+the+death+penalty+today&source=bl&ots=TCHnFK3KXp&sig=QaszpREG-hSU10-p8V4aFgWxFBM&hl=en&ei=QSPzSqrqBKW7jAeZk9CoDg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CBcQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=&f=true Dieter, R.C. (2009): The Death Penalty in Black and White: Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Decides. Retrieved November 7, 2009, from http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-penalty-black-and-white-who-lives-who-dies-who-decides Scott, P. (2008): Racial Disparities in the Capital of Capital Punishment. Retrieved November 6, 2009, from http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:69_v4d0utn0J:graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/national/20080429_sidebar_study.pdf+Racial+Disparity+in+the+death+penalty&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ke Read More