Essay about Race and the Death Penalty

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).

Racial Disparity is denoting or diminishing a human species based on race and physical characteristics. Let’s start off by just stating the obvious, “Roughly 12% of the United States population is black. Yet in 2011, black Americans constituted 30% of persons arrested for a property offense and 38% of persons arrested for a violent offense. Black youths account for 16% of all children in America yet make up 28% of juvenile arrests.” (http://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/shadow-report-to-the-united-nations-human-rights-committee-regarding-racial-disparities-in-the-united-states-criminal-justice-system) I believe the biggest disparity in the United States is incarceration rates. In 2010 according to the prison policy initiative in the United States Whites make up for 64% of the population, Hispanics 16% and blacks 13% of the United States population. When it comes to the percent of United States incarnated population Whites make up for 39%, Hispanics 19% and Blacks 40%. This study shows that Blacks are incarnated more and at a more punishable rate. Not only are black people sentenced more but they are also sentenced harsher. In an article written by Nazgol Ghandnoosh, Ph. D and research analyst says that blacks are sentenced 14 percent longer than whites. There is bias everywhere in the criminal justice system in my opinion not only with prosecutors but with officers of the law in any way, judges, etc. Another racial disparity in the

Two professors from the University of British Columbia and the University of Michigan Law School, M. Marit Rehavi and Sonja B. Starr recently conducted a study that confirms that Black Americans receive a stricter punishment than White Americans. According to the study “Black Americans receive almost sixty percent longer prison sentences than white Americans who committed the same crime (NewsOne 1).” Dr. Rehavi and Dr. Starr gathered their data from fifty-eight thousand federal criminal cases and determined that the sentences that Black people received varied significantly from those given White people (NewsOne 2). Assistant Professor of Economics Dr.

Racial Disparity is a term that distinguishes the legal and illegal factors that explains racial differences among a race. Legal factors includes things such as criminal records and serious offenses. Legal factors of racial disparity pertains to a person’s criminal behavior. Extralegal factors pertains to a person’s race, class, and if they’re male or female. The few ways that racial disparity is explained in the criminal justice system is differentially involvement, individual racism, and institutional racism. African-Americans and Hispanics usually commit crimes because they suffer from poverty and most of them

While both sides of this deeply entrenched controversy substantiate meaningful claims, neither of their arguments is exhaustive, although Walker, Spohn, and DeLone’s case is much more convincing. African American arrest statistics are best understood as the convergence of both a somewhat higher incidence of crime as well as racial discrimination in the criminal justice system. Although higher incidence of crime may initially appear to justify higher arrest rates, there is significant evidence demonstrating that not only is African American crime exaggerated by a racially discriminatory criminal justice system (one of the products of which is disparate arrest rates), the greater crime rates in and of themselves are a result of economic inequality.

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).

Samantha Smith once said, “Well, I just hope we can have peace, and I hope it’ll do some good”. This quote makes me wonder if senseless homicides are slowly becoming a new way of life or if hoping for the world without murder just seems like a never-developed reality? The recent murders of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Laquan McDonald, and Amber Monroe makes it seen as an overdue alarm call for not only the African-American community to start taking action, but outside the African American community to fully unite and work together as one to combat race-related homicides in our nation.

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.

There has been major sources of racial discrimination in our nation's criminal justice system, the selective prosecution of African-Americans in particular. The American criminal justice system must recognize that the racial inequities have poisoned the criminal justice system. The American system of justice is a racially biased, two-tiered system; one for minorities and one for whites. In particular, African-Americans are disproportionately targeted, arrested, prosecuted, and sentenced to long mandatory prison terms and execution (www.crimenet.org). The U. S. has gone from prison and jail population of about 300,00 to more than 2 million, most assume that this surge in imprisonment was due to a surge in violent crime but when incarceration

When we hear the words “justice system” we should be thinking about fairness, justice, honesty, righteousness. However, contrary to what comes to mind in reality the justice system is rife with inequality, injustice, corruption and dishonestly. The definition for institutional inequality is the existence of unequal opportunities and rewards for different social positions or statuses within a group of society (about.com) and this is what people of color are facing on a daily basis. On this paper examined the research about the ratio of African American and other ethnic groups incarcerated versus whites, also how this affects the community, why such a high percentage of African Americans ages 25-29 are incarcerated and the racial disparities that exist in the justice system.

Crime and Race: Is there a Connection As of lately when we hear of committed crimes in the media, race is the primary topic of discussion more than the actual crime committed. As evidenced by research, debate will be conducted on the incidence of criminal prosecution, conviction, prison sentences and time served among different ethnic groups to include African Americans, Hispanics and Non-Hispanic White males. Crime is prevalent among all minorities, however there are factors and variables that lead to the predisposition of being involved in crime, and serving time for those crimes committed. Among these minority groups are differences which can help identify what exactly influences each group’s actions.

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.

The history of the death penalty is a long and brutal one. From the stoning and crucifixion killings of the B.C. era to today’s methods of the electric chair and lethal injection, governments of one kind or another have sentenced people to death for thousands of years. Capital punishment does not work, there is an interest of mounting evidence that proves this .The death penalty, both in the U.S. and around the world, is discriminatory and is used disproportionately against the poverty-stricken, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious communities. Since humans are fallible, the risk of executing the innocent can never be eliminated. Death row inmates in the U.S. typically spend over a decade awaiting execution. Some prisoners have been on death row for well around 20 years. During this time, they are consistently isolated from other prisoners, excluded from prison educational and work

Racial discrimination and capital punishment has been a heated topic discussed ever since the 1972 case Furman v. Georgia. In the article, “Does Racial Discrimination Make Capital Punishment Wrong?” by Stephen Nathanson, his position in this argument is affirmative as he argues that racial discrimination makes capital punishment wrong since death penalty is administered in an arbitrary manner. Arbitrariness is the quality of being determined by chance or impulse, and not by reason or principle. He claims capital punishment has been used disproportionately and arbitrarily since black people who murder are more likely to be executed than white people.

America is one of the few western nations still using the death penalty to this day as a method of punishment for capital crime. Over 2,000 prisoners are on death row with their fates already determined (Andre, Velazquez) What makes the death penalty so complex, and that is noticed but sometimes disregarded, is the way prisoners are executed, the fact that some of these prisoners may be innocent and the racial disparities that can determine the reason for sentencing people to death. As prisoners wait to be executed, civil rights activists aim to get rid of the penalty by arguing against it for being unjust and immoral. The arguments for and against the penalty are compelling: capital punishment is regarded as unconstitutional as it goes against the 8th amendment of our nation’s constitution, it saves people by getting rid of a murderer or person who is just as bad as a killer, and it is in the best interest of the people for these convicts to not walk the streets we live in. Both groups, left and right, have a say in what they think about the issue, but so far no change has been done to fix it.