Death Penalty Discriminates Against African-Americans

Capital Punishment in the United States, the most severe of all punishments, is unfair because it is discriminatory against African-Americans.

Fairness implies that any person charged with a capital crime offense, regardless of race, economic status or geographic location, will receive the same treatment under the law than any other person charged with the same crime, according to Diane Henningfeld, editor of "The Death Penalty – Opposing Viewpoints."

However, this is simply not the case in America.

It has been proven by various forms of statistical data that the death penalty defines race as a determining factor of who receives it.

Here are some shocking statistics, from editor Mary Williams, that prove the injustices of the United States' capital punishment system:

• Murderers of whites are four times more likely to receive the death penalty than murderers of blacks
• Since the death penalty was restored in 1976, only six white people have been executed for murdering a black person, while 112 black people have been executed for murdering whites
• More than 20 percent of black defendants who have been executed were convicted by all-white juries

The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP), which is comprised of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Urban League (NUL) and 140 other organizations, complains that capital punishment is overwhelmingly reserved for racial minorities as well.

"We cannot be blind to the fact that actual executions have taken place primarily in the South and in at least a racially suspect manner," said Jack Greenberg, law professor at Columbia University.

Countless samples of statistical data and personal accounts support his allegation.

Race strictly disadvantages black jurors, black victims and black defendants.

For instance, in the 2002 U.S. Supreme Court case, Miller-El v. Dretke, a black Texas death row inmate, Thomas Miller-El, petitioned the federal courts to enforce the rule of Batson v. Kentucky, which prohibits racial discrimination in the exercise of peremptory challenges in jury selection. Miller-El claimed that Dallas County prosecutors engaged in a racially-influenced jury selection at the time of his trial in 1986 when they eliminated 10 out of 11 competent black panelists. Fortunately, prosecutors announced in July of 2005 that they would pursue a new trial. This information is compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center.

Another U.S. Supreme Court case that fought racial discrimination was the notorious 1987 McCleskey v. Kemp case in which Warren McCleskey, convicted of armed robbery and murder, argued that the death penalty was racially bigoted.

In addition, a number of reported inaccuracies transpire in the U.S. capital punishment system involving African-Americans.

Errors in death penalty cases occur much more frequently in states with higher proportions of African-Americans than in states with fewer African-Americans, according to James Liebman, a professor at Columbia Law School.

"I think blacks get harsher sentences than whites and are accused more," said Samantha Furtick, a 20-year-old junior and graphic design major at Winthrop University. She is a capital punishment advocate who is actually aware of and admits that faults exist within the system.

“If I declare there is a racial issue at hand or there isn’t a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have,” said Peggy McIntosh, a scholar of women’s studies at Wellesley College and the author of "White Privilege." Her personal generalization reinforces the notion that Caucasians have superiority over African-Americans in society, which even extends to the courtroom.

To me, it is no coincidence that black defendants are much more likely to be executed than white defendants. The truth is that those who commit crimes against African-Americans are penalized less harshly than those who commit crimes against whites.

America has a system of capital punishment that results in inconsistent and arbitrary executions that perpetrate death to those not based on what they have or have not done, but what color their skin is.