Discrimination and the Death Penalty By Katie Matthews Twenty years have past
since this court declared that the death penalty must be imposed fairly, and
with reasonable consistency, or not at all, and, despite the effort of the
states and courts to devise legal formulas and procedural rules to meet this
daunting challenge, the death penalty remains fraught with arbitrariness,
discrimination, caprice and mistake. --Justice Harry Blackmun, Feb. 22, 1994.
Capital punishment is one of the most debatable subjects, in American
society. Proponents of the death penalty believe it is justice--retribution for
the crimes committed. The reason underlining Americans' overwhelming support of
executions is usually revenge. We believe that most serious crimes deserve the
most serious punishment, as we recall the statement from the Old Testament, An
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, principle.
When we hear about a murderer, rarely do we want to understand what drove him
to murder; more often, we wish to kill him. It is difficult to understand that
the vengefulness we feel toward a murderer, which drives us to champion
execution, is identical to the wish for revenge the murderer feels for what he
believes to be the horrendous injustices in his life.
Our desire to tame the heart of the murderer is quite limited. We feel as
murderous toward them as they do toward those they have killed. We wish either
to kill or torture them. This makes a murderer, if he is imprisoned, even more
murderous. Just as the murderer's murder accomplishes nothing, so too the death
penalty has not in any way decreased murder. The judicial system was created in
hopes of providing justice for all people.
Although movements such as Civil Rights and Black Power have taken place to
ensure justice for all, discrimination still exists in our judicial system.
Capital Punishment is applied in an unfair, arbitrary and discriminatory manner.
As long as it remains a part of our penal system, it will be used
disproportionately against the poor, racial minorities, and those who had
received inadequate legal representation. The following essay will cover how
racism is applied in the death penalty; the means of discretion that the judges
and jury use; and how the poor are discriminated against due to their lack of
proper council.
Even under the most sophisticated death penalty statutes, race continues to
play a major role in determining who shall live and who shall die. --Justice
Harry Blackmun Throughout American history, the death penalty has fallen
disproportionately on racial minorities. From 1930, the first year for which
statistics are readily available from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, to 1967,
3,859 persons were executed under civil jurisdiction in the United States.
During this period of nearly half a century, over half (54%) of those
executed were black, 45 percent were white, and the remaining one percent were
members of other racial groups (see fig. 1). Between 1930 and 1976 nearly 90% of
those executed for the crime of rape in this country were African-Americans .
Between 1930 and 1996, 4220 prisoners were executed in the U.S.; more than half
(53%) were black . Currently, about 50% of those on the nations death rows are
from minority populations representing 20% of the country's population.
