When will people realized that just because a person is of another race that they are more dangerous than another race. For instance, the 1972 Furman V. Georgia case abolished the death penalty for four years on the grounds that capital punishment was extensive with racial inequalities (Latzer 21). Over twenty five years later, those inequalities are higher than ever. The statistics says that African Americans are twelve percent of the U.S. population, but are 43 percent of the prisoners on death row. Although blacks make up 50 percent of all murder victims, 83 percent of the victims in death penalty cases are white.
There are a few reasons why racialized mass incarceration occurs and how it negatively affects poor black communities. Blacks are overly portrayed in jails and prisons. Bobo and Thompson stated that in 1954, 98,000 African Americans were in jail or prison. By 2002, there was an increase of 900%, 884,500 African Americans were in jail or prisons. In 2007, blacks made up 39% of detained males in prisons or jails however they make up 12% of the total adult male population.
In this paper I shall explain the history and the human rights violated in relation to the death penalty. I will use current events and human rights acts to support my point. In recent studies shown it states that about 43% of all death row inmates are white, and a close 42% are black. The other 16% are made up of Hispanics and other races. In Washington State, Jurors are three times more likely to sentence you to death if the defendant is black then for a white defendant.
If there is any punishment much crueler than death, please let me know. In addition, it is time to face the fact that our judicial system is prejudiced. For instance; in southern states, 8 percent of the black criminals who murder get the death penalty. Only 1 percent of white murderers get capital punishment. Also, murderers are seven times more likely to get the death penalty for murdering a white person, as they are if they murdered a black person.
Since capital punishment has been reinstituted, the issue has been a major discussion in the media and among the American public. Along with the discussions, questions have arisen on whether the death penalty is a racist punishment. A 1990 report released by the federal government's General Accounting Office found a "pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing and imposition of the death penalty" (Bailey). After reviewing over 2,500 homicide cases and sentencing patterns in Georgia in the 1970s, the report concluded that a person accused of killing a white was 4.3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than a person accused of killing a black. The Stanford Law Review published a study that found similar patterns of racial dispair, based on the race of the victim, in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Il... ... middle of paper ... ...raised: "Is it morally right?"
Anthony Porter, one of the 13, spent 15 years on Death Row and was within two days of being executed, before a group of Northwestern journalism students uncovered evidence that was used to prove his innocence. In the United States there are currently 3,490 prisoners awaiting execution. Many of these prisoners are poor and are where they are because they could not afford good legal representation. Most of these prisoners are Black, and they have been arrested and incarcerated in southern states. According to the July 2004 Quarterly Report of the NAACP Criminal Justice Project, 52% of the inmates who currently sit on Death Row are Black or Hispanic.
In addition, 80% of individuals executed since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976 have been executed for murders involving white victims, despite the fact that blacks and whites are murder victims in almost even numbers of crimes (The United States Department of Justice 2014). The institutionalized discrimination of the justice system makes a silent statement that some lives have more value than do others. This is supported by the disproportional percentage of blacks put to death by the justice system, especially when the victim is white. It is something done, consciously or subconsciously, that reflects the large distance our society remains from true
In Texas, for example, blacks found guilty of killing whites were found to be six times more likely to receive the death penalty that whites convicted of killing whites. Of the 3,061 inmates on death row 1,246 of them are black, making 40% of death row inmates black. Compare this to the fact that blacks make up 12% of the U.S. population. Furthermore, many black prisoners on death row were sentenced to death by all-white juries after prosecutors had deliberately excluded black people from the jury pool. Racism alone is not the only problem with Capital Punishment.
Many of the families of victims do not want the criminals to be put to death. The death penalty costs more than a life sentence in jail. It is also racists. "Since 1976, there have been five hundred twenty-three executions in the United States, twenty-three in 1999 alone. There was only eleven before 1984.
21 David C. Baldus, et al, "Comparative Review of Death Sentences: An Empirical Study of the Georgia Experience," The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 74 (1983): 663-664. 22 Baldus, 664. 23 Donziger, 109. 24 U.S. General Accounting Office, "Death Penalty Sentencing: Research Indicates Patterns of Racial Disparities," The Death Penalty in America, 271. 25 Hugo Adams Bedau, The Death Penalty in America: Current Controversies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997) 250.