Bias and the death penalty

The bias and discrimination that exists in our society is rampant in our criminal justice system. So says Michelle Alexander in her newly released book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. The book details how today it is legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways that it was previously legal to discriminate against African Americans. It argues that incarceration has become the newest form of racial control.

As a part of the criminal justice system, death penalty sentencing is also biased. While there are persistent difficulties with finding data related to bias, partly due to the nature of bias and insufficient data collection, there are studies and cases that point to the nearly arbitrary nature of sentencing.

One relevant study, “The Impact of Legally Inappropriate Factors on Death Sentencing for California Homicides, 1990-1999″ (46 Santa Clara L. Rev. (2005)), is a state-wide study on the role of race, ethnicity and geography in death sentencing in California. The authors, Glenn Pierce and Michael Radelet, reviewed all homicides that occurred in California from 1990-99, using records from the FBI and Vital Statistics. They conclude that the race and ethnicity of the victim and the location of the crime play a critical role in determining who will be sentenced to death.

Key findings of the study include:

• While 27.6% of murder victims are white, 80% of executions in California have been for those convicted of killing whites.
• Those who murder whites are over three times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill African-Americans and over four times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill Latinos.
• Death sentence rates vary substantially from county to county in California and this variation cannot be explained simply based on homicide rates. A person convicted of 1st degree murder in a predominantly white, rural county is more than three times as likely to be sentenced to death than a person convicted of a similar crime in a diverse, urban county.

This year, anti-death penalty groups in California will attempt to abolish the death penalty in part due to the erratic nature of death sentencing. The Savings, Accountability and Full Enforcement for California Act, or SAFE California Act, would abolish the death penalty, causing prisoners currently sentenced to death to have their sentences commuted to life without the possibility of parole. These prisoners and future prisoners sentenced to life without parole would be required to work and make restitution to the Victims’ Services fund. In addition, the SAFE California Act would create a SAFE California Fund to fund police departments, sheriffs and district attorney offices, in order to increase the rate at which homicide and rape cases may be solved. Organizers must collect 504,000 valid voter signatures by the March 18th deadline to qualify the initiative for the election.