North Carolina Death Penalty Analysis

There is also a large disparity between races when it comes to sentencing convicts to Death Row. Looking just at the federal death penalty data released by the Department of Justice between 1995 and 2000, 682 defendants were charged with death-eligible crimes. Out of those 682 defendants, the defendant was black 48% of the cases, Hispanic in 29% of the cases, and white in only 20% of the cases (Coker, 2003).

In South Carolina one of their historical moments of punishments was In 1989 and 1993 where African American males Kevin Dean Young a killer along with accomplice who was convicted twice for killing Denis Ray Helper a white male who was just only 35 years old at the time of the incident. In addition he suspect Dennis Young had a criminal history of crime with being on parole at the time and unfortunately in an ordeal of tragedy Dennis Helper was murder. However, In this case the victim was murder for only $67.00 from being shot twice with a fatal shot twice from Young who recently just start his first year as a principal in an elementary school in Anderson South Carolina... Moreover, n of the accomplice William Bell shot the victim in the head while he was lying on the ground which he was given the death penalty was his part in this murder as well.

Nearly 80 percent of murder victim in cases resulting in an execution have been white while 50 percent of murder victims are white 82 percent was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty.Senator RussFeingold stated "we simply cannot say we live in a country that offers equal justice to all Americans when racial disparities plague the system by which our society imposes the ultimate punishment" (senator RussFeingold 108th congress 2003). A 2007 report concluded that one-third of African American death row inmates in Philadelphia would have received sentence of life improsement if they had not been African-American.In 1990, non-partisan US General Accounting found a pattern of evidence Indicating racial Disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of death penalty (Feb 1,2001)."Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life"(Writer Activist and Civil Rights Leader Coretta Scott King Feb7, 2006).

The death penalty is one of the most controversial issues on American soil. Blacks are more likely to face the death penalty than whites in the commission of identical crimes(CNN, 2014). The history of capital punishment dates back to the days before Christ. The Old Testament adage 'an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,' has survived throughout the ages despite the New Testament's rendition of 'thou shall not kill'. Today's American victims endure a more demure of style of cruel and unusual punishment; death by lethal injection has replaced the barbaric traditions of the past.

South Carolina is one of thirty one states in our country that utilizes the death penalty (DPIC, 2015). There are currently forty-four death row inmates in the state of South Carolina as of July 1, 2015 (DPIC, 2015). This population resides at Lieber Correctional Institute, a level 3 maximum security prison, in Ridgeville South Carolina (SCDC, 2015). There have been a total of 684 individuals put to death in our state’s history (DPIC, 2015). A choice between lethal injection and electrocution are the two active methods used in South Carolina by a means of execution for death row inmates (DPIC, 2015). This population consists of murderers, physical and sexual assaulters, abusers, and the aggressors of our society. They have made choices and

The article that I read about the racial bias of the death penalty in the U.S. by David Love explained how southern states are responsible for the vast majority of African American executions in the United States. Love explicitly stated that “the application of the U.S. death penalty is unfair, arbitrary, and racially biased.” Most disturbingly, the article explained that whether or not a capital punishment defendant receives the death penalty does not depend on the facts of the case but more so on the race of the defendant and the race of the victim. Moreover, even the county in which the case was prosecuted can play a role in capital punishment sentencing.

The California Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation, give a thorough background to the death penalty. The CDCR confirm that the introducing of the death penalty here in California, began due to the Criminal Practices Act of 1851 along with the penal code that was reinstated the fourteenth of February, 1872. According to the CDCR, there are two maximum facilities who held executions in California, being in San Quentin and Folsom. The first ever execution was held on the third of March, 1893 in San Quentin maximum facility. Folsom following their first on the thirteenth of December. 1895. Throughout the years, over 215 inmates in San Quentin and 92 in Folsom were executed, none being documented correctly. Thus, leading into the California

The ethnicity of a defendant in a capital case should not play a role whatsoever in their sentencing. However, it plays a significant and crucial role in deciding who receives capital punishment. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, minorities account for a disproportionate “43% of total executions since 1976 and 55% of those are currently awaiting execution.” An interesting piece of information that I found from the article was that only 12 people have been executed where the defendant was white and the murder victim was black which is disconcerting when compared to the 178 black defendants who have been executed for the murders of white victims. The racial disparities in these statistics are alarming and troublesome.

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 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.”

The American judicial system is one of the best in the world. With that being said, we still have problems within our system that need to be investigated. Do we have an issue on whether or not persons of color are convicted at a higher rate than Caucasians due to their racial make-up? Many statistics will show that racial disparities have existed within the American justice system for years. When comparing the

While the topic can be overwhelming and complex, it is important to study the racist institution of the death penalty because execution is the ultimate expression of which individuals are valued by our society and which are considered dispensable. What the US expresses through its executions carries some racist undertones when we look at the races of the persons being executed, but it takes on a clearly racial direction when we consider the race of the original murder victim. For example, "the most comprehensive study of the death penalty found that killers of whites were eleven times more likely to be condemned to death than killers of African- Americans."3 On the flip side, "only 31 of the over 18,000 executions in this country's history involved a white person being punished for killing a Black person."4 In capital punishment, we find the modernday counterpart to lynching. Of course, lynching often meant sporadic acts of individual racism. Selective killing today is an official, bureaucratized act of the state and therefore an official statement of what our government stands for. And what the government stands for is the most complete disempowerment possible - death - for a large number of Black individuals.

In 1976, the United States Supreme Court was given the opportunity to abolish death sentences, but they voted in favor of allowing executions. The years prior to the 1976 vote were marred by inconsistencies on the behalf of these judges, as they changed their minds on the legality of the death penalty three times. Furthermore, the discrepancies in the way minorities are executed versus that of white people is alarming, showing the rampant racism that exists in the judicial system. The racial biases in how death sentences are given, as well the inconsistencies of the Supreme Court during the years leading up to the legalization of executions, should cause the United States to rescind the death penalty.

Despite the Court’s insistence upon such safeguards, and judicial pronouncements that all states currently conducting executions have met the standards, disturbing patterns persist in the application of the death penalty. Statistics show, for example, that people who kill white people are far more

A law professor from the University of Iowa, David C. Baldus and two colleagues published a study not long after the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 (Dow, 2011). In this study it looked at over 2,000 homicide cases just within Georgia alone beginning in 1972, what they found was startling (Dow, 2011). Baldus found that black defendants were 1.7 times more likely to be given the death penalty than white defendants and those who murdered white victims were actually 4.3 times more apt to be