Black and White

Or the nature of the crime? Or was it simply race?
We don't have much data on the nature of the crime. But Supreme Court regulations require a state to come up with aggravating and mitigating factors for capital cases. Aggravating factors might include, say, the killing of a child or torturing a victim. Mitigating factors might include the age of the offender or their childhood experience, whether they were abused, etc.

So why do you think that blacks are twice as likely to get the death penalty for killing a white than a white for killing a nonwhite?
There are two plausible explanations. Prosecutors often win higher office if they win well-publicized cases. When a black kills a white such killings gets more publicity and we have evidence for that. Secondly—and perhaps even more plausible—appellate court justices at the state level are often subject to elections, called retention elections. That means they run unopposed without a party label. It's hard to blow an election like that. But some appellate justices in California and a few other states supposedly granted relief in too many death penalty appeals and got unelected in these retention elections. That's also why some states that are reluctant to execute just stall. California has something like 650 people who've been on death row, and since 1976 but this state has only executed about 15 people. They are dragging it out because they see the pressure and don't want to lose their seats. My fundamental point is that the death penalty is intrinsically political.

But also about race; that's what your study found.
Yes, it's both. The findings, in short, show that we clearly value white lives more than those of blacks or Hispanics.

You've been researching race in the judicial system for years. Was there anything in this study that particularly surprised you?
What is interesting is the characteristics of states that make the death penalty legal and lead to additional executions. At the state level we found that … the greater the strength of the Republican Party in the state, the more likely you'll have executions, death sentences or that capital punishment will be legal in the state.

What about the size of the African-American population in any given state, does that play any role?
Yes, up to a point. As the black population grows in a given state, then executions become more likely, probably because whites fear blacks. But after a—point-when the black population reaches about 16 p—rcent-executions start to diminish probably because blacks become politically strong enough to reduce executions when their proportions reach that level. What bothered me about this study is that we couldn't get more cooperation from state corrections departments. We'd like to expand beyond the 16 states we studied: Arizona, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia and Washington.

© 2007