Death Penalty Case Analysis

Racial injustice has always existed in the American criminal justice system (S. Steiker and M. Steiker, 243). This can be seen in recent years where constitutional campaigns on the abolishment of capital punishment were led by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s (NAACP) Legal Defense and Education Fund (S. Steiker and M.Steiker, 244). This is an organization that fights for equality of rights and to “eliminate race-based discrimination” (Our Mission). It demonstrates that there is an inequality in the treatment of races concerning the death penalty. In addition, according to the authors, they never found a

I think Texas needs to discriminate certain behaviors. Many people spent so many years in prison waiting to be executed. I think the government needs to reduce the waiting period for only those people who they are sure that they committed the crime and needs to be executed. Most of the time it’s unfair because those people spend their years waiting and enjoying in prison while the family members are still waiting for justice. It’s unfair that sometimes the family members don’t even witness the justice because they die before the person who committed the crime is executed. The Texas government also needs to reduce jail length for people arrested because of possession of drugs. The government needs to punish them, instead of putting them in

The injustice that comes from this prosecution isn’t taken as seriously as it should be, with it ruining lives of loved of victims and the victims themselves. A study by Katherine Beckett, details how jurors in Washington State were 3 times more likely to impose the death penalty to a person of color than a white person. Deaths that have included white victims make up 80% of Capital cases, while these victims only make up one half of all murder cases. By 2002, 12 cases of the defendant being white and the murder victim being black have been sent to the death penalty, while 178 cases of the defendant being black have been executed. Discrimination in a court of law that relates to the death penalty correlates directly with the prosecution and defense provided. 94.5% of elected prosecutors that reside in death penalty states are white, even going as far as 100% white in 9 states like Washington and Tennessee. These statistics showcase how the legal system is much more harsher and likely to punish people based on their skin

The rates of death penalty convictions in the United States are outstanding, and with the growing number of cases going into the criminal justice system for processing and in accordance with the numbers of death penalty convictions, it can become questionable the type of counsel being provided to those defendants who are without sufficient income to afford a lawyer for their defense in a capital case, these defendants are known under the official name of indigent defendants. Questions over the type of counsel that is appointed to indigent defendants have opened due to the high incarceration rates of minorities in the prison system.

In 1998, Norman Grim was convicted of murder in the Circuit Court of the First Judicial Circuit, in and for Santa Rosa County. Grim v. State, 841 So.2d 455 (Fla. 2003). At the conclusion of the penalty phase, the jury returned a unanimous generalized advisory recommendation to impose the death penalty. The court, not the jury, then made the findings of fact required to impose a sentence of death under Florida law. The court, not the jury, found beyond a reasonable doubt that those aggravating factors were “sufficient” to impose the death penalty, and that the aggravators were not outweighed by the mitigation. Based upon this fact-finding, the court sentenced Petitioner to death.

Being sent to Death Row is the highest prosecution a criminal could be sentenced to and the process when determining of someone deserves a death sentence is a very bias decision. Since 1977 when capital punishment was restored there has been about 20,600 homicides and only about .7 death sentences for every 100 homicides has been given in the Cook county. The decision to impose a death sentence is not only based on the crime done but also the race of the victim. Attorneys at a state level has a less formal guide when giving death sentences. It is commonly seen how race plays a major role in the justice system. As apart of attorney protocol of determining if the death sentence is given it is seen black males will be given a higher sentence versus a white male even if the crimes where similar. In this article “Disparities on Death Row” published in Grumman points out the unjustness in the justice system. Through ethos, pathos, and logos Cornelia Grumman effectively persuades her audience to spread the issues of capital punishment assignment.

In “The Death Penalty: Is it ever justified?” by Edward I. Koch, he talks about how death penalty affirms life. Death penalty is the only way we have of doing justice in response to the worst of crimes. It also assures that life is precious by making murderers fear that the end of their lives is coming. A cold-blooded murderer named Robert Lee Willie said “Killing people is wrong…It makes no different whether it’s citizens, countries, or governments, killing is wrong”. The only reason he had behind his saying was because he didn’t want to die. Even though death penalty may sound brutal, it actually isn’t.

The U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) found “a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty.” Moreover, the study reached the conclusion that a defendant in a capital case was much more likely to be given the death sentence if the murder victim was white. Sadly, “the single most reliable predictor of whether someone will be sentenced to death is the race of the victim.”

Racial disparity in the sentencing process of the criminal justice system also exists because of racial jurors. To eliminate the suspensions of racial disparity of racial jurors the jury will select at least one African-American to serve for the jury. A percentage of African-Americans oppose capital punishment (Tabak, 1999, p. 6). Prosecutors commonly discriminate against African-Americans during challenges of discretions and blatantly abuse the powers of prosecutors. Juries predominantly use more Whites in every trial is inappropriate on the levels of the criminal justice system. Americans have rights to a trial by jury of peers and has the right not to exclude minorities in the selection of a jury. Excluding minorities in a jury of an individual’s peers is a violation of an objective and fair trial for a defendant.

For example, in California, a Los Angeles deputy public defender complained the death row was like “a college where nobody ever graduates, where they just keep building more dorms” (Galliher, Koch, & Wark 122). This bizarre analogy was generated because by 2009, California had on executed thirteen people over a thirty-one year period. According to this deputy’s calculation that meant “it would take 1,600 years to execute everybody on death row” (Galliher, Koch, & Wark 122). California is a state with a wide variety of cultures and many lawyers. As such, two-thirds of the death sentences were vacated by higher courts and as of 2011, many attorneys and activists in California claimed that the death penalty was just too costly to be feasible. Appeals could tie up a California case or decades because “most prosecutors and judges don’t have much experience with death penalty cases and don’t know what they are doing, and thus they make mistakes that are picked up on appeal” (Galliher, Koch, & Wark

However, statistics have shown that the death penalty is applied racially and discriminatorily. Three out of five murder cases in which the victim was white and the defendant was black resulted in the defendant receiving a death penalty. Professor Katherine Beckett of the University of Washington reechoed this fact by stating that, jurors in Washington “were four and a half times more likely to impose a sentence of death when the defendant was black than they were in cases involving similarly situated white defendants.” So where is the justice that advocates of the death penalty are imploring? Moreover, the rich are more likely to escape a death penalty than the poor. The DPIC has reported that most defendants in capital cases cannot afford an attorney. Thus, if equal justice for all is anything to go by, then justice should be equally distributed regardless of race and economic

The eighth amendment is designed to protect us from cruel and unusual punishment. Conservation of the United States Constitution, and all moral ideologies have been set aside. An old form of barbaric punishment and the saying "eye for an eye" is still being widely accepted by Americans today. The old form of barbaric punishment is capital punishment. No matter how "humane" the death penalty has become, it is still the killing of another human being. When people stand outside prisons and cheer that an individual was murdered, there is a problem. When people justify the killing of another person, there

In Stephen Bright’s article, “The Death Penalty as the Answer to Crime: Costly, Counterproductive, and Corrupting” Bright asserts that capital punishment does not work because it is racially biased, the quality of the lawyers and attorneys supplied by the state to poor defendants is unfair, and that the law system currently in place does not accomplish its true goals. Bright defends his claim with logos and ethos by examining the opinions of judges and district attorneys, and by describing experience within the fields of human rights and law himself in order to persuade the reader to take up more cases for those on death row. Given the language used in this article Bright is writing to an audience with intermediate to professional experience within the field of law, and a willingness to adopt a new idea on the constitutionality behind the death penalty.

While supporters of the death penalty thought that the death penalty could be applied without racial and class disparities, research conducted through the years have indicated that race and class disparities have shown not in isolated cases, but in many cases. The authors argue that “Public opinion on the death penalty show that while most Americans recognize the problem of race and class bias, they do not view such discrimination as a reason to oppose the death penalty” (Radelet & Borg, 2000, page 5).

In the courtroom, these stressors come out in full force. Although the Courts have “concluded that statistics alone do not prove that race enter[s] into any capital sentencing decision in any one particular case…” it is obvious that ethnicity becomes a factor (Ross 153). Countering the court’s argument, statistics have shown that in America, “blacks who killed whites were five and six times… more likely to be sentenced to death than whites who killed whites” (151). The reason for this is mainly due to jurors unintentionally letting race influence their decision making process. The in-group bias and ethnic boundaries described above cloud the jury’s judgment, seeking a stronger penalty for minority groups. Also, if the victim who was killed was someone with good