Female Victims Case Study

There is presently much controversy regarding acquaintance rape victims and their level of culpability. Benevolent sexists promote the belief that these individuals can actually be blamed for their experiences because they adopted behaviors that were sexually immoral and that influenced the perpetrators to go through with their plans. Barbara Masser, Kate Lee, and Blake M. McKimmie's article "Bad Woman, Bad Victim? Disentangling the Effects of Victim Stereotypicality, Gender Stereotypicality and Benevolent Sexism on Acquaintance Rape Victim Blame" attempts to provide more information in regard to how particular factors might influence acquaintance rape victims.

Women who commit sex offenses was largely overlooked by the public, until recently (Cain & Anderson, 2016, p. 5). It is normal for one to automatically associate men with sex crimes. Yet past research as well as previous criminal cases has proven that women commit sex crimes, just as men do. However, women and men are not treated the same by society or the judicial system, nor do they have the same impacts on their victims. Although it is very rare instances when women commit sexual offenses, more research and advancements made towards the specific topic of female sex offenders. It is also clear that majority of the research on sex offenders fails to even consider the female sex offender (Carpenter, 2013, p. 162).

Professor Michael Tonry is the McKnight Presidential Professor of Criminal Law and Policy, director of the Institute on Crime and Public Policy of the University of Minnesota. He is one of the leading scholars of crime and punishment who has put race and race disparity at for front of the American Criminal Justice System and written many scholarly books on the topic. In his other works he has shaped an image of how racially minded the Criminal Justice System is and how such injustice has been applied to African Americans. Based on Tonry`s credentials, the book reviewed in this paper complies valuable and trustworthy statistics and information, and also author`s own experience in this particular field. The book “Punishing Race: A Continuing American Dilemma” is a work of Michael Tonry in which he tries to address the issue of disparity and discrimination toward African Americans and how systematically attitudes and mind set have shaped laws and limitations by the government on this particular group of American society.

Baldus study was based on more than two thousand murder cases in Georgia, and “the study found that defendants charged with killing white victims received the death penalty eleven times more often than defendants charged with killing black victims.” (Alexander p.110) Baldus Study was significant to this chapter because it shows patterns of discrimination and how the government and police enforcement use race to harass African Americans.

Within society, there is an engrained belief of what makes a person a legitimate victim and often their status as a ‘victim’ is questioned. This is especially true if the victim does not fit the typical stereotype of who is considered to be a legitimate victim. This is most widely illustrated in cases involving male victims of sexual assault.

At the prosecution stage, African Americans are subject to racially biased charges and plea agreements (TLC, 2011). African Americans are less likely to have their charges dismissed or reduced or to receive any kind of alternate sentencing than their white counterparts (TLC, 2011). In the last stage, the finding of guilt and sentencing, the decisions of jurors may be affected by race (Toth et al, 2008) African Americans receive racially discriminatory sentences from judges (TLC, 2011). A New York study from 1990 to 1992 revealed one-third of minorities would have receive a lesser sentence if they were treated the same as white and there would have been a 5 percent decrease in African Americans sent to prison during that time period if they had received the same probation privileges (TLC, 2011). African Americans receive death sentences more than whites who have committed similar crimes (Toth et al, 2008). Because of the unfair treatment from the beginning to the end of the justice system there is an over represented amount of African Americans in prison (Toth et al, 2008). Some of the problems faced by African Americans in prison are gangs, racial preferences given to whites, and unfair treatment by prison guards (Toth et al, 2008).

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

Q1.The racial/ethnic differences in offending, victimization, and incarceration? Minorities, particularly African Americans, are generally overrepresented in the criminal justice system both as offenders and as victims.  According to the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) for 2003, African Americans (who were 12.7 percent of the population in 2003) were arrested for 37 percent of violent crimes (murder and nonnegligent manslaughter, forcible rape, robbery and aggravated assault) and 29 percent of property crime (102:288). African Americans are disproportionately arrested for violent crimes and whites for burglaries and property crimes. Although most crime is committed by males, black women are also disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system. The rate of black women under control of the criminal justice system is growing faster than for any other group, including black men and white men (86:136). Blacks are victims of serious violent crimes at far higher rates than whites. In 2002, blacks were 6 times more likely to be murdered than whites; and although homicide levels have declined for all groups over the past decade, during the 1976 to 2002 period, rates were disproportionately high for African Americans at 47 percent of victims (28

In March 1906, Tennessee native Ed Johnson was sentenced to death for the rape of eighteen-year-old Nevada Taylor. Mr. Johnson supposedly choked the victim with a leather strap and subsequently sexually assaulted her. When testifying, the woman only had one adjective to describe the perpetrator, a word that damned the twenty-six-year-old to a guilty verdict; black. Although he had never been in possession of a leather strap, had a sound alibi verified by countless testimonies, and the rape victim never definitively identified Mr. Johnson during the trial, the all-white jury came to the conclusion that the African-American man was undeniably responsible for the cold-blooded atrocity. A day later, while sitting in his cell, a mob of white men dragged Ed Johnson out of the jailhouse, paraded him around the streets, and ultimately hanged the guiltless man at Walnut Street Bridge. The men then began to fire round after round at his lifeless body for the amusement of townsfolk who had gathered to watch the lynching, until, “one stray bullet severed the rope,” (Yellin 1). As the bloody corpse fell to the ground to the delight of the white children, “ one of the men put the barrel of his gun to Mr. Johnson 's head and fired five times,” (Yellin 1). The men faced no charges and nearly one hundred years later the Supreme Court found the viciously murdered man innocent. Unfortunately, when it comes to promoting justice for non-white Americans, the United States’ criminal justice system

It is important for the federal sentencing guidelines to be fair and eliminate demographic disparities, such as gender. There are countless instances where sentencing will vary when referring to the same crime. It is common for women to be perceived as more innocent, and the caretakers. These may serve as contributing factors as to why judges’ are possibly more lenient in sentencing female offenders. Different demographic and extralegal factors such as race, ethnicity, and age are also contributing factors to this theory (Doerner,

White Americans, who make a big share of policymakers, criminal equity professionals, the media, and the overall population, overestimate the extent of felonies perpetrated by ethnic minorities and the extent of racial minorities who carry out unlawful acts. Indeed, even people who condemn bigotry regularly harbor unconscious and accidental racial inclinations. Researchers before 2010  focused their studies on a how African Americans were perceived and how they were treated differently . Maxwell in his work entitled “The Impact of Race on the Adjudication of Sexual Assault and Other Violent Crimes” focuses on how white Americans are treated fairly compared to black litigants and Brennan’s work entitled “Depictions Of Female Offenders In Front-Page Newspaper Stories: The Importance Of Race/Ethnicity” depicts how black offenders  have a negative image. Whereas the research that was conducted after 2010 focused on actual cases , how  the legal system is stacked up against them and uses those cases to show the flaws of the system and what needs to be fixed. The works of  Morrison, Mike, Amanda DeVaul-Fetters, and Bertram

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

Women viewed as "feminine" by the court were sent to reformatories, while women viewed as "masculine" were subject to penal institutions alongside male prisoners. To be exact, the odds of incarceration for female defendants were approximately 42% lower than the odds of incarceration for male defendants (Demuth & Doerner, 2014, pg.4). Another study even found that female defendants were sentenced less harshly than male defendants, and on average 14% less likely to be incarcerated and received prison sentences about 7 months shorter (Demuth & Doerner, 2014, pg.4). These statistics prove that female defendants are viewed differently in our court system and thereby receive more lenient sentences. This can be due to the fact that women are looked at as feminine, caregiving creatures, while men are supposed to be the dominant "manly"

In this week topic I have chosen the article about Black Female Executions. This article talks about isolate racist and sexist conduct of justice practitioners directed toward Black women and the imposition of capital punishment. The death penalty jurisdictions put to death 83% of Black women executed in the United States before the end of slavery. According to the article criminal justice researchers have failed to study female executions during that period, as well as during Reconstruction. The debate about racial discrimination in the criminal justice system is still unresolved.

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.