harry Wrote:
Men of color are disproportionately sentenced to death. Even if you believe that the state has the right to kill humans (something that is considered barbaric in most western post-industrial societies), that statistically if a black man and white man are both convicted of the same crime, the black man is much more likely to be sentenced to death, is absurd and unconstitutional.
Here's a question on this for harry or any others who wish to intelligently chime in:
Preface: Keep in mind that I am primarily against the Death Penalty, so I'm not looking to justify or defend my position, just try to scrape away at some of the common political claims. I could accept the Death Penalty in the case of serial or spree killers, e.g. Ted Bundy, Andrew Cunanan, David Berkowitz. Tookie would
narrowly fit under this guideline, but most likely because he got picked up.
The Question: How much of the racial disparity in death penalty rates can be attributed to prosecutorial sentencing habits? For instance, most violent crime and black on black crime in Maryland takes place in Baltimore City and Prince George's County. Prosectutors in these two jurisdictions are less likely to invoke the death penalty. Prosecutors in Baltimore & PG Co. are much more likely to be black and Democrat. I'm not judging racial or political motivations for their tendencies, but I think it would be disingenous to assume there were no correlation.
Baltimore County, which is Maryland's third most populous county and surrounds but does not include Baltimore City, is 75% white and accounts for 2/3 of the executions in Maryland. I don't have numbers but it wouldn't be the least bit surprising if most of those cases were black on white crime.
Now, it is politically expedient for many office seekers to cite this as evidence that the death penalty is racist in application, and it is equally as expedient for Baltimore County district attorneys to tout their hard-nosed record against crime. But if every potential capital case in every jurisdiction were tried as such, how would the numbers play out? How would the black on black murders from Baltimore City and PG County affect statistics? At the very least, it should bring them closer together.
If it does bring those numbers much closer together, it may demonstrate that race isn't so much a determining factor; however, that does not eliminate economic and social class, which I feel is a stronger reason against executions. I also agree that race has a strong influence on economic and social class, but I'm not entirely sold that race is the stronger determining factor.