We have heard so many times that Capital Punishment is racist. The Reverend Jesse Jackson, when he isn’t creating illegitimate little Jesse’s, has stated
"This is a problem! You escape the federal death penalty based on your race and residence. If you’re an African American in Texas who commits a crime that could warrant the federal death penalty, you get it. If you’re white in New York City, you probably don’t."
Interesting. But is it true? Let’s look at 2005 statistics
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Number of Caucasians put to death: 37
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Number of Blacks: 19
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Number of Latino/Other: 3
By my math, Whites are put to death almost twice as often as Blacks.
How about since reintroduction of the Death Penalty in 1976?
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White: 580 (58%)
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Black: 339 (34%)
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Latino: 63 (6%)
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Other: 22 (2.3%)
Still a white majority. The highest percentage of people on Death Row Currently? White. Now, the GAO said in a 1990 study:
"In 82% of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e., those who murdered whites were found more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks."
That is true. The majority of victims since 1976? White. Matter of fact, 80% of the victims were white.
The fact is, if you look strictly at the stats, there is racism. Towards the White race. When all is said and done, the convicted sit on death row for decades, having their cases reheard in new and unusual ways, filing appeals, protesting their innocence. And, sometimes, they are granted clemency or the case is overturned, often on some strange little piece of supposed evidence. But what is often forgotten is that the evidence generally pointed to the person as a stone cold killer. If you kill someone under certain conditions, you go to Death Row, and, maybe, to your execution.
And the next person to possibly be executed? Clarence Ray Allen. White.
The moral is that people are making an issue out of something that doesn’t exist.
(stats from Death Penalty Information Center)
Hey Pirate,
If you adjust your statistics for the relative number of people in the general population, where African-Americans represent at most 20% of the country, then you see where the charges of racism are based. It should not be surprising that more whites are on death row than blacks because we make up the vast majority of people in this country.
Another issue that would be more interesting to consider overall is socio-economic class and what role poverty plays in someone’s landing on death row. I would imagine that a disproportionate number of poor and uneducated people end up there, no matter what their race.