Racial disparity in the criminal justice system is a product of a number of factors –crime, offenses such drugs, social and economic disparities, legislative policies, and the use of discretion by the criminal justice system. Social and economic disparities have faces and many are of color.
African-Americans are more likely than others to have social histories that include poverty, exposure to neighborhood violence, and exposure to crime-prone role models. For example, African-American children with no prior admissions to the juvenile justice system were six times more likely to be incarcerated in a public facility than white children with the same background that were charged with the same offense. A major study sponsored by the Department of Justice in the early 1980s noted that juvenile justice system processing appears to be counterproductive, placing minority children at a disproportionately greater risk of subsequent incarceration (Deadly Statistics: A Survey of Crime and Punishment, 2000). This writer’s grandmother retired after more than thirty years as a welfare social worker for Los Angeles County. She has stated on more than occasion that the government is the main reason that most black men are in jail awaiting the death penalty today. In the sixties and early seventies, she says that women on welfare were not allowed to have men in the home, even the father of the children. These fatherless generations of men seem more prone to crime, and are creating another generation of fatherless children by being irresponsible or jailed.
The criminal justice system itself is racially biased and allowed to continue, unchallenged in its unfair practice of racial disparity in the application of capital punishment. In 1997, David Baldus and statistician George Woodworth examined the death penalty rates among all death eligible defendants in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania between the years of 1983 and 1993. The results of their study proved that the odds of receiving the death penalty in Philadelphia increased by 38% when the accused was black (Deadly Statistics: A Survey of Crime and Punishment, 2000). The discretion of judges and juries imposing the death penalty enables the penalty to be selectively applied, feeding prejudices against the accused if he or she is poor and despised, and lacking political clout, or if he or she is a member of an unpopular minority.
Another major problem is that African-American capital defendants do not have African-American representation on their juries. In order to see how race-linked differences come about, the author conducted a statistical analysis according to race and gender categories. The study found that white jurors of both genders are much less receptive to mitigating evidence than black jurors: 63% of white male jurors reported thinking of the black defendant as dangerous to others, whereas only 26.7% of black male jurors thought of the black defendant as dangerous. While 46.7% of black male jurors said the black defendant was sorry for what he did, only 7.4% of white male jurors said the defendant was sorry. While 42.1% of black women acknowledged a defendant’s emotional disturbance, only 12.0% of white women described the same defendant as emotionally unstable or disturbed. Black male jurors were significantly more likely than others to imagine themselves in the situation of the defendant’s family (Racial Disparities in Federal Death Penalty Prosecutions 1988-1994).
And if the jury situation isn’t bad enough, the fact that the majority of minority death row inmates were, and or is being represented by court appointed public defenders is a well-known issue to the criminal justice students at the University of Phoenix. Public defenders are usually paid a monthly salary regardless of caseload. It is unknown if they are given adequate time to prepare for capital crimes or their experience with such critical cases. Most blacks on trial for capital offences cannot afford the legal dream-team needed to balance the justice system. There does not seem to be any incentive for a court appointed attorney to spend much time representing the capital defendant, other than the obvious life saving moment. To this date, O.J. Simpson is the only African-American known to this writer that was found innocent at a major murder trial involving white victims.
A hundred years ago, it might not have been surprising to hear testimony about someone's race in open court. Recently, blatant racism has seen and heard too often in courtrooms around the country. In death penalty cases, using derogatory slurs kindles the flames of prejudice and hatred, allowing the juries to judge harshly those they wish to scapegoat for the problem of crime. For example, "One of you two is gonna hang for this. Since you're the nigger, you're elected." These words were spoken by a Texas police officer to Clarence Brandley, who was charged with the murder of a white high school girl. Brandley was later exonerated in 1990 after ten years on death row (Criminal Justice Racism Verified in Recent Studies, 2004). This writer had mixed feelings about the three white men who killed James Byrd by dragging him behind a truck. In Jasper, Texas, blacks and whites have always been rivals. Although blacks have murdered no whites, many blacks have been found dead with only lingering whispers as to which white person will never be prosecuted. Racism is and has always been an inclining problem for minorities. A criminal justice system consisting of racist is not blind, but narrow minded and ignorant. In a society with a history as vicious as ours, is racial equality in the sentencing of the death penalty an impending reality, or a continuation of the blight that blinds the eyes of American justice.
“Attorneys appointed to represent indigent capital defendants frequently lack the qualities necessary to provide a competent defense, and sometimes have exhibited such poor character that they have subsequently been disbarred" (Capital Punishment and Homicide, 2004). When the capabilities of the defense are compared with that of the prosecution, the chances seem slim for the capital defendant. The prosecution is aided by law enforcement agencies such as crime labs, hospitals, and many other scientific resources that are not available to the defense free of charge.
A negative social issue with Americans today is the cost of keeping an inmate on death row. Capital cases burden county budgets with large unexpected costs, according to a report released by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Counties manage these high costs by decreasing funding for highways, police, and by increasing taxes. The report estimates that between 1982-1997 the extra cost of capital trials was $1.6 billion (Race Pervades Death Penalty, 1998). The states are spending a combined $1.6 billion dollars just to keep people alive long enough to kill them is ludicrous. This money can be used especially in the black and Hispanic communities for government programs and to help better educate adults and children possibly deterring them for a future of crime.
A recent Harris Poll found that only 41% of Americans believe that the death penalty deters crime, marking the smallest number of such respondents in 27 years of this poll. Only 37% of those polled would continue to support capital punishment if they believed "that quite a substantial number of innocent people are convicted of murder." Overall, 69% percent of those polled said that they support capital punishment. The poll was conducted in December 2003 (Criminal Justice Racism Verified in Recent Studies, 2004). The death penalty does not deter crime period. Sending people to death row is not only costly, but seems to have no effect on the continual ravages of the criminal element. Deterrence is effective when the actual offender is put to death, therefore securing the fact that the death penalty will deter future crimes of the dead.
If any deterrence is expected in society, than drastic changes are on the horizon. This writer suggests that the first change be made in education. Since blacks and other minorities are over represented on death row and in jail, America must spend money to educate these communities. Black scholastic reports should equal that of whites, and the environment in which black children live must be improved. A scholarship should be awarded to girls and boys who graduate high school without a baby. Discipline and self-preservation are often taken for granted, but need to be reinforced in communities with more single-parent households. For example, this writer’s husband says that women can’t teach boys to be men, because a boy has to learn how to be a man. On the same token, girls learn cooking, cleaning, and all about women hood from their mothers. A class on what constitutes the death penalty should be taught in all levels of grade school. Children and adults must know that if you kill someone while committing a felony such as car jacking or robbing a liquor store, then you might be facing a capital offence.
Capital punishment is the lawful infliction of death as a punishment and since ancient times it has been used for a wide variety of offences. Minorities, especially blacks, are over represented when compared to the national population on death row. Due to economic structure, blacks continue to be represented in court by unskilled attorneys contributing to increasing population of death row inmates. The threat of death does not deter crime, and statistics have shown that the death penalty has very little or no effects on free Americans. Capital punishment is an expensive hardship on this nation; its states, people and it should be abolished.
References
Author Unknown (2003, February, 26) Race and the Death Penalty
[Online], Available: www.aclu.org
Author Unknown (1994, March) Racial Disparities in Federal Death Penalty Prosecutions 1988-1994 [Online], Available: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.
Beal, F. (2004, October) Criminal Justice Racism Verified in Recent Studies
[Online], Available: www.blackradicalcongress.org/ comm/chronicles
Fessenden, Ford. 2000. Deadly Statistics: A Survey of Crime and Punishment. The New York Times September 22, 2000. Accessed on October 5, 2004 from: www.nytimes.com
Goertzel, T. (2004, July) Capital Punishment and Homicide: Sociological Realities and Econometric Illusions [Online], Available: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.
Kalogeras, S., & Mauer, M. (2004, May) The Sentencing Project: Racial Disparities in the Criminal Justice System [Online], Available: http://www.sentencingproject.org/
Rovella, D. (1998, June 8) Race Pervades Death Penalty
[Online], Available: www.picard.tnstate.edu/~cmcginnis/RacePervadesDeathPenalty.htm
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