Analyzing the Supreme Court in Gregg v Georgia - Research Paper Example

The Color of Justice: Analyzing the Supreme Court in Gregg v Georgia In Gregg vs. Georgia, the Supreme Court expressed the view that racial discrimination would not persist under the guided-discretion statutes enacted since the FURMAN decision. The Furman decision had sought to abolish the death penalty in the realization that most executions were carried out arbitrarily and that its random application was unconstitutional. The Gregg v Georgia case however reversed the earlier decision taken in the Furman case and restored the death penalty in the guise that the process of execution would not be flawed and racially motivated as was the case initially as the constitution had been enacted to take care of the racial factor. The views of held by the Supreme Court in Gregg v Georgia were obviously well informed due to the fact that there was a need for a legal framework to make offenders of capital crimes such as murder to pay maximally for their crimes. However, the move by the Supreme Court judges to delineate the death sentence and executions from racial discrimination was in itself flawed because the reality is that race, ethnicity and racial discrimination still play a role in the manner the death penalty is applied in the United States today (Walker, Samuel, Spohn, Cassia & Delone 39). This is true as far as Samuel Walker, Cassia Spohn, Miriam Delone, the authors of The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America are concerned. According to this text, the three elements of race, ethnicity and crime go hand in hand in the American society, especially in the criminal justice and the jail systems. Walker, Cassia and Miriam offers compelling evidence in the text to support their assertion that race is a major determining factor in the administration of criminal justice within the US. The authors go a marked extent in to explain that racial based and selective application of the death penalty across the racial divide is mainly motivated by the existing deep seated racial biases and historical stereotypes that tend to relate crime with the black community and other minorities (Walker, Samuel, Spohn, Cassia & Delone 491). This evidence therefore supports the assertion that it would be practically impossible to discuss the issues of crimes, employment, sentencing, policing and the death penalty as they are applied in America today without tying them to the racial menace because the reality is that racial discrimination does play a role in all these. The text clearly presents the existing evidence that crime, race and ethnicity are correlated by first discussing the existing racial based social and economic inequalities that contribute the high rates of crimes among the black and minority communities in America the first place. The assertion by the Supreme Court in Gregg v Georgia restoring the death penalty and downplaying the racial factor in the executions is irreparably flawed from the fact that it did not consider the underlying factors that lead to high crime rates within the minority groups from the onset. The law while well intentioned did open a loophole for the continued to selective application of criminal justice due to its failure to address the underlying inequalities that predispose the minority groups capital crimes that would eventually lead to the death penalty. In a bid to bring out the existing social reality in America today, Cassia Spohn, Miriam Delone in their book The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America exposes us to the compelling data on crime and justice, noting that different ethnic groups have very different experiences of crimes and criminal justice. For instance, the book notes that native and black Americans experience the highest rate of heinous crimes and the highest rate of victimization in the justice system. Asian Americans on the other hand experience lowest rates of crimes and equally lower rates of victimization while Hispanic Americans experience average rates of criminal victimization and actual criminal behavior. It therefore follows that the death penalty restored in the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case of Gregg v Georgia case would extend the existing inequalities amongst these three groups as far as crime, sentencing and execution is concerned. Criminal justice in America is a complex topic because of the fact that it is heavily influenced by the already existing racial and ethnic disparities. It is therefore erroneous for the Supreme Court in the Gregg case to make generalizations in total disregard of the disproportionate numbers of ethnic minority groups who are arrested, sentenced and on death row in the American prisons with some decisions basing heavily on racial discrimination and other ethnic biases (Walker, Samuel, Spohn, Cassia & Delone 491). The reality is that race has always mattered in the American justice system and has continued to influence death penalty and subsequent executions. This is the reality despite the contrary argument that the over-involvement of people of color in criminal activities is the reason behind the existing disparities in arrests, sentencing and incarceration rather than racial discrimination. While there can never be situations of pure justice in any justice system, the American justice system tends to thrive on contextual discrimination in which case racial minorities face more severe treatment than the white offenders at various stages of criminal justice application. This applies more when the jury is faced a decision to impose and apply the death sentence. Additionally, the treatment accorded racial minorities in the American justice system and in prisons is more punitive that that of whites in some states than others (Walker, Samuel, Spohn, Cassia & Delone 493). For instance police departments in some states embrace the use of force or racial profiling when handling offenders of color while others strict to a fairly and just procedures. In some instances, black/minority offenders who commit crimes such as drug smuggling or gang violence are treated more harshly than their white counterparts who commit similar crimes. These disparities explain high number of arrests and incarceration amongst the minority groups and the basis for disputing the Supreme Court ruling in Gregg v Georgia. Works cited Walker, Samuel, Spohn, Cassia & Delone, Miriam. The Color of Justice: Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America. Belmont, CA: Wordsworth Cengage Learning, 2002. Print. Read More