Race

NEW RESOURCES: Most Recent DEATH ROW USA Report Now Available

The latest edition of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund's "Death Row USA" shows that the number of people on the death row in the United States is continuing to slowly decline, falling to 3,260 as of April 1, 2010. In 2000, there were 3,682 inmates on death row.  Nationally, the racial composition of those on death row is 44% white, 41% black, and 12% Latino/Latina. California continues to have the largest death row population (702), followed by Florida (398) and Texas (333). Pennsylvania (222) and Alabama (204) complete the list of the states with the five largest death rows in the country. Of those jurisdictions with more than 10 inmates on death row, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Texas have the largest percentage of minorities on death row--each has 69%.

STUDIES: New Report Cites Multiple Problems with North Carolina's Death Penalty

According to a comprehensive review of studies on the death penalty by Matthew Robinson, Professor of Government and Justice Studies at Appalachian State University, the death penalty in North Carolina is expensive, racially biased and ineffective.  Prof. Robinson analyzed data from more than 20 death penalty studies and found them to be remarkably consistent in their conclusions.  He said, "In the past six years, three states have abolished the death penalty: Illinois, New Mexico and New Jersey.  They did it for the same reason. They found racial bias, they found it to be costly, they found it to be ineffective and a threat to innocent people."  According to Robinson's review, use of the death penalty in North Carolina has been in decline since 2000.  The state has not had an execution since 2006.  He found no evidence that the death penalty deters crime, noting that the state's murder rate has declined since executions stopped in 2006.  He also found evidence of racial bias in the state's death penalty system.  Nearly 80% of death sentences imposed in North Carolina have been in cases where the victim was white, far higher than the percentage of whites who are generally victims of murder.

STUDIES: In Louisiana, Odds of a Death Sentence 97% Higher If Victim is White

A recent study conducted by Professors Glenn Pierce and Michael Radelet published in the Lousiana Law Review showed that the odds of a death sentence in parts of Louisiana were 2.6 times higher for those charged with killing a white victim than for those charged with killing a black victim. The study examined 191 homicides in East Baton Rouge Parish between 1990 and 2008 involving a charge of first-degree murder. Even after considering other variables such as the number of aggravating circumstances, the number of concurrent felonies and the number of homicide victims, the odds of a death sentence were 97% higher for those whose victim was white than for those whose victim was black. The authors of the study suggested that one reason why the victim’s race was an important factor was because “prosecutors’ offices, jurors, judges, investigating police officers, and others involved in constructing a death penalty case are (consciously or unconsciously) not as outraged or energized, on average, when a black is murdered as when a white is murdered.” The authors said “death penalty cases are expensive, and choices need to be made on how often the death penalty can be sought and in which cases”and that “the social status of the victim and the family of the victim, including his or her race, increases [a case's] importance.”

STUDIES: Racial and Geographic Disparities in the Federal Death Penalty

A new study published in the Washington Law Review addresses the racial and geographical disparities in the implementation of the federal death penalty. The study, conducted by G. Ben Cohen, Counsel for the Capital Appeals Project in New Orleans, and Robert J. Smith, Counsel for the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, concludes that the disparities in the federal death penalty may exist because federal cases do not use a county-level jury pool but instead employ a wider pool from the federal-district level, resulting in the dilution of minority representation in the jury pool. According to the authors, “Capital verdicts become separated from the moral judgments of the community when [there are] fewer minority group members in the jury pool.” They proposed utilizing a county-level jury pool as is done in state cases: “If federal capital juries come from the county where the offense occurred, then prosecutors are left to determine whether to seek the death penalty based on the relative federal interest in the crime (and not the prosecutorial interest to secure a death sentence by any means possible). This solution is also more democratic—the citizens most impacted by the effects of high crime, overly aggressive policing, or poor public policy are the decision-makers responsible for redressing those harms.”

NEW RESOURCES: Hispanics and the Death Penalty

According to the latest figures from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Hispanics represent a larger proportion of those on death row than in the past.  Hispanics constituted almost 20% of the new admissions to death row in 2009 (18 new inmates).  Half of the new Hispanic death row inmates were from California, bringing their total to 157 Hispanic inmates, the most in the country.  Hispanics now represent 13.5% of the U.S. death row population.  In 2000, they made up 11% of death row.  Of the executions carried out in 2009, 13% (7 out of 52, correcting earlier number) were of Hispanic inmates.  All of the executions of Hispanics occurred in the South.  In federal statistics, Hispanics are counted as an ethnic group, rather than as a racial group.