The race of the victim proves to be as good a predictor of a capital sentence as the aggravating circumstances spelled out in the Georgia statute, such as whether the defendant has a prior murder conviction or was the primary actor in the present murder. The multiple-regression analysis with the greatest explanatory power shows that after controlling for non-racial factors, murderers of white victims receive a death sentence 4.3 times more frequently than murderers of black victims. No factor other than race explains these racial patterns. Thus, the reason why a bias against black defendants is not even more apparent is that most black defendants have killed black victims almost no cases are found of white defendants who have killed black victims and virtually no defendant convicted of killing a black victim gets the death penalty.) (Only 64 of the approximately 2500 homicide cases studied involved killings of blacks by whites, so the 3% figure in this category represents a total of two death sentences over a six-year period. When the race of the defendant is added to the analysis, the following pattern appears: 22% of black defendants who kill white victims are sentenced to death 8% of white defendants who kill white victims are sentenced to death 1% of black defendants who kill black victims are sentenced to death and 3% of white defendants who kill black victims are sentenced to death. White-victim cases are roughly eleven times more likely than black-victim cases to result in a sentence of death. Professor Baldus found, among other things, that:įewer than 40% of Georgia homicide cases involve white victims, but in 87% of the cases in which a death sentence is imposed the victim is white. This information allowed the researchers to control for hundreds of variables about the offender, victim and crime-thereby permitting a statistical comparison of cases in order to see what factors influenced whether a person was sentenced to death. Baldus’ study collected information about all the capital defendants in Georgia-whether or not they were sentenced to death. As evidence for this claim, McCleskey presented the results of an extensive statistical study by Professor David Baldus of the University of Iowa Law Schooland his colleagues. McCleskey argued that there was racial discrimination in the application of Georgia's death penalty. Questions of whether or not the death penalty was applied fairly along racial lines surfaced in McCleskey v. Race and the Application of the Death Penalty Dretke (2005), the Court determined that the prosecutor's race-neutral explanations for the strikes of potential black jurors were so far at odds with the evidence that the explanations indicated discriminatory intent. Kentucky (1986) that a prosecutor who strikes a disproportionate number of citizens of the same race in selecting a jury is required to rebut the inference of discrimination by showing neutral reasons for the strikes. Race was raised as an issue in the criminal justice debate when the U.S. Supreme Court Evaluation of Racial Bias in the Criminal Justice System Racial disparities have been shown not just in isolated instances, but in many state studies over many years. According to some studies, race can influence which cases are chosen for capital prosecution and which prosecutors are allowed to make those decisions. Studies have indicated that race plays a decisive role in the question of who lives and dies by execution in this country. Significant statistical research exists regarding race and the death penalty, and race is an issue that continues to be at the forefront of America’s capital punishment debate. Issues of Race Raised by the Gary Graham Case Ways in Which Race Can Impact Capital Sentencing Please register or login for free access to our collection of supplementary materials. Legal Defense Fund Petition Filed on Behalf of Gary Graham (74 MB PDF).user is not associated with role, redirect to signup page
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