Does race factor into how death sentences are handed out? According to David R. Dow, a professor at the University of Houston Law Center, there's no doubt. He makes several good points to back up his argument in a New York Times op-ed.
Dow cites a study that examined more than 2,000 Georgia murders beginning in 1972. Researchers found that black defendants were 1.7 times more likely to receive the death penalty than white defendants and that murderers of white victims were 4.3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who killed blacks, Dow stressed.
Evidently, Georgia's not unique. Across the U.S., blacks and whites are murdered at about the same rate, but 80 percent of those sentenced to death for committing murder killed white people, Dow pointed out. Texas, the state that leads the nation in executions, has put 470 convicts to death since 1976, more than a third of the U.S. total of 1,257. Despite this disproportionately high number of executions, only two white Texans have been put to death for killing blacks. One of those prisoners executed killed both a black person and a white person during the same incident. That makes it unclear if he would've been sentenced to death for killing an African American alone.
Despite the bias clearly evident in death sentences, the Supreme Court decided 5-to-4 in a 1987 case called McCleskey v. Kemp that overall bias in executions doesn't prove that racial bigotry is to blame in specific cases where death sentences are handed out to blacks. The ruling meant that Warren McCleskey, a black man sentenced to death for killing a white cop, couldn't argue that he was the victim of racial discrimination.
Dow's take on that turn of events?
"Of course, the court had to say that, or America's capital justice system would have screeched to a halt."
Your thoughts?
Comments
Ever since I heard about the Green River Killer I’ve been suspicious about this. I couldn’t believe that he killed so many people and no one noticed. This guy was surrounded by thousands of people, a very large community, and no one saw a thing. That’s just not something that I can believe.
Since the death penalty was reinstated in the 1970,s, more whites than blacks have been executed across the country, despite the fact that murders are committed in almost equal numbers by both races.
Look it up.
i think you are very wrnog about that because more blacks have been getting killed more than whites have you even heard about the latest murder a black boy has just been shot and the black have more right to defend themselves just like tha white people it is not right for white people to think about the blacks like that. what males them so different fro mblacks they are a color to ,so they should think about this.