Effects Of Race On Sentencing In Capital Punishment Cases Essay, Research Paper

The Effects of Race on Sentencing in Capital Punishment Cases

Throughout history, minorities have been ill-represented in the criminal

justice system, particularly in cases where the possible outcome is death. In

early America, blacks were lynched for the slightest violation of informal laws

and many of these killings occurred without any type of due process. As the

judicial system has matured, minorities have found better representation but it

is not completely unbiased. In the past twenty years strict controls have been

implemented but the system still has symptoms of racial bias. This racial bias

was first recognized by the Supreme Court in Fruman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238

(1972). The Supreme Court Justices decide that the death penalty was being

handed out unfairly and according to Gest (1996) the Supreme Court felt the

death penalty was being imposed ?freakishly? and ?wantonly? and ?most often on

blacks? Several years later in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), the

Supreme Court decided, with efficient controls, the death penalty could be used

constitutionally. Yet, even with these various controls, the system does not

effectively eliminate racial bias.

Since Gregg v. Georgia the total population of all 36 death rows has

grown as has the number of judicial controls used by each state. Of the 3,122

people on death row 41% are black while 48% are white (Gest, 1996, 41). This

figure may be acceptable at first glance but one must take into account the fact

that only 12% of the U.S. population is black (Smolowe, 1991, 68). Carolyn

Snurkowski of the Florida attorney generals office believes that the

disproportionate number of blacks on death row can be explained by the fact that,

?Many black murders result from barroom brawls that wouldn’t call for the death

penalty, but many white murders occur on top of another offense, such as robbery?

(As cited in Gest, 1986, 25). This may be true but the Washington Legal

Foundation offers their own explanation by arguing that ?blacks are arrested for

murder at a higher rate than are whites. When arrest totals are factored in, ‘

the probability of a white murderer ending up on death row is 33 percent greater

than in the case of a black murderer (As cited in Gest, 1986, 25).

According to Professor Steven Goldstein of Florida State University, ?

There are so many discretionary stages: whether the prosecutor decides to seek

the death penalty, whether the jury recommends it, whether the judge gives it?

(As cited in Smolowe, 1991, 68). It is in these discretionary stages that

racial biases can infect the system of dealing out death sentences. Smolowe

(1991) shows this infection by giving examples of two cases decided in February

of 1991, both in Columbus. The first example is a white defendant named James

Robert Caldwell who was convicted of stabbing his 10 year old son repeatedly and

raping and killing his 12 year old daughter. The second example is of a black

man, Jerry Walker, convicted of killing a 22-year-old white man while robbing a

convenience-store. Caldwells trial lasted three times as long as Walkers and

Caldwell received a life sentence while Walker received a death sentence. In

these examples, it is believed that not only the race of the victims, but also

the value of the victims, biased the sentencing decisions. The 22-year-old man

killed by Walker was the son of a Army commander at Fort Benning while Caldwells

victims were not influential in the community. In examples such as these, it

becomes evident that racial bias, in any or all of the discretionary stages,

becomes racial injustice in the end. Smolowe (1991) also makes the point that

Columbus is not alone: ?A 1990 report prepared by the governments General

Accounting Office found a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in

the charging, sentencing and imposition of the death penalty.?

In an article by Seligman (1994), Professor Joseph Katz of Georgia

State ?and other scholars have made a separate point about bias claims based on

the devalued lives of murder victims.? Seligman also asserts that those

claiming bias believe that it is in the race of the victim and not the race of

the defendant, and because the lives of blacks have been devalued, people who

murder blacks are less likely to receive death sentences than those who murder

whites (Seligman, 1994, 113). An Iowa Law Professor, David Baldus, also found

that juries put a premium on the lives of victims (As cited in Lacayo, 1987, 80).

In a study of more than 2,000 Georgia murder cases, Baldus found that ?those

who killed whites were 4.3 times as likely to receive the death penalty as those

who killed blacks. And blacks who killed whites were most likely of all to be

condemned to die? (As cited in Lacayo, 1987, 80). According to Gest (1996), of

those executed since the reinstatement of the death penalty, 80% have murdered

whites, while only 12% of those executed in the same time period have had black

victims. These figures show an obvious trend of racial bias against those who

murdered whites. Could these disparities be because, as sociologist Michael

Radelet put it, ?Prosecutors are political animals, they are influenced by

community outrage, which is subtly influenced by race,? or is it because ?it is

built into the system that those in the predominant race will be more concerned

about crime victims of their own race,? as stated by Welsh White of the

University of Pittsburgh Law School (As cited in Gest, 1986, 25).

Because of the immense possibility of discrimination in sentencing in

capital punishment cases, each stage of prosecution must be controlled as much

as possible. Although these offenders are the worst the criminal justice system

has to offer, prosecutors must be encouraged to consider the crime and not the

race of the victim or offender and the judge must attempt to exclude the same

racial issue when deciding the punishment. I believe Justice Brennan said it

best when he wrote the dissenting opinion in a capital punishment appeal. He

wrote, ?It is tempting to pretend that minorities on death row share a fate in

no way connected to our own, that our treatment of them sounds no echoes beyond

the chambers in which they die. Such an illusion is ultimately corrosive, for

the reverberations of injustice are not so easily confined? (As cited in Lacayo,

1987, 80). With great effort, the judicial controls can begin to battle the

racial bias of Americas Judicial system but to completely eliminate such a bias,

the people involved in the judicial process must learn to look past the race of

the offender or the value of the victim, and instead focus on circumstances of

the crime.

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