Tagged: Criminal Law

Bias and the death penalty

January 24, 2012 | Jocelyn Wolf | Tags: ,

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.

Arizona Enacts Stringent Law on Immigration

April 27, 2010 | sotivearsim | Tags: , ,

Now that the heated battles over the comprehensive health care reform are fading from the public consciousness the new issue of immigration reform that has been simmering on the back burner has boiled over with Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signing into law one of the most stringent laws to identify, prosecute, and deport undocumented immigrants.

The new law has reignited the national debate on immigration reform from the pundits on cable news networks to everyday people on both sides of the issues.   This is the most stringent law passed by a state since California’s enactment of prop 187, which sought to limit undocumented immigrants access to social programs.  The Arizona law would be different in that it would provide law enforcement agencies wide discretion to stop and request proof of citizenship from anyone reasonably suspected of being an undocumented immigrant.  There is a great fear in many communities that the new law will lend itself to abuse by law enforcement because they will fall inevitably rely on the color of someone’s skin to establish the reasonable suspicion of whether that person is undocumented.  This should be of interest to legal services advocates and others serving low income clients who are, in most places, disproportionately people of color and who, whether citizens or of legal immigration status, may be mistakenly identified as undocumented.

As the new Arizona law continues to roil the immigration debate check out the New York Times Op-Ed that discusses the new law from different perspectives.  Here are some interesting excerpts from the debate:

Steven A. Camarota is the director of research at the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit research organization.

“The state’s new immigration enforcement law is designed to mirror federal immigration laws. Federal law already requires aliens to register and carry their documents with them. The new Arizona law simply does the same thing. Because illegal immigrants are by definition in violation of federal immigration laws, they can now be arrested.”

Hiroshi Motomura, the Susan Westerberg Prager Professor of Law at the U.C.L.A. School of Law, is the author of “Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States.”

“Our immigration and citizenship laws define who “we” are as Americans. A century and half ago, this nation fought a bloody civil war. That conflict established not only that all persons truly are created equal, but also that citizenship means national citizenship, and that no single region or state may decide who belongs as an American.”

Crime and Recession – A Conservative Perspective

February 17, 2010 | kwilliams | Tags: , , , , ,

In a recent Wall Street Journal article Heather Mac Donald, of the conservative think-tank “The Manhattan Institute”, claims that poverty, racism, and social injustice are not root-causes of crime. Mac Donald argues that under conventional left-wing wisdom, crime should be increasing due to the current economic recession. Mac Donald cites 2009 FBI crime statistics that reportedly show national decreases in crime. She writes, “The recession of 2008-09 has undercut one of the most destructive social theories that came out of the 1960s: the idea that the root cause of crime lies in income inequality and social injustice.”

Mac Donald criticizes government social service programs, including “after-school programs, social workers, and summer jobs”, suggesting that they are not effective in decreasing crime.

Is Mac Donald’s analysis too simplistic? Does a decrease in some crimes really demonstrate that crime is not linked to poverty, race, or social injustice? Even if one were to accept Mac Donald’s arguments, is it really better for individuals and society for the government to eliminate needed social service programs?

President Obama to Sign Hate Crimes Bill Tomorrow

October 27, 2009 | Maya Roy | Tags: ,

Part of the defense authorization bill, the new hate crimes provision will extend federal hate crimes law to include crimes motivated by a victim’s gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.

As most REP blog readers know, Matthew Shepard, a gay twenty-one year old college student, was tortured and brutally murdered in 1998 because of his sexual orientation. His death inspired a national movement to expand federal hate crimes law. Eleven years after Matthew’s death, members of his family will attend the signing ceremony at the White House tomorrow.

Study supports Black renters’ case against Antioch

September 15, 2009 | colinbailey | Tags: , , , , ,

catphoto-2008

The San Francisco Chronicle provided an update in an article today on a case involving minority residents of Section 8 housing in Antioch, California, that was first written up by the Race Equity Project E-Newsletter a year ago.  The subject of E-Newsletter 3.6 was the intersection of criminal law, race, and poverty law practice.  The specific case was described in the article titled, “Targeted Enforcement of Section 8 Participants in Antioch.”  The case, brought by Bay Area Legal Aid and Public Advocates, Inc. on behalf of primarily African-American Section 8 tenants in the city of Antioch, alleged that the City’s special police enforcement division, called, the “Community Action Team” (CAT), had systematically targeted Section 8 tenants for police enforcement (“over-policing”) in an effort to drive those tenants out of Antioch and, in so doing, had violated those tenants’ civil rights.

The SF Chronicle reports that criminologist Barry Krisberg‘s recent study confirmed that “Antioch’s police Community Action Team … has disproportionately concentrated on subsidized Section 8 housing for the poor, and even more so on black tenants.”

The CAT website says that the CAT’s goal is to protect the right it asserts Antioch residents have “to feel safe in their homes and neighborhoods…“  The purported right to be free from fear has yet to be codified in California law.  Based on what Social Cognition science tells us about how our mind’s implicit associations are primed to be unconsciously fearful of, especially, people of African descent by such things as watching the local evening news (see Jerry Kang’s article, “Trojan Horses of Race“), residents of Antioch, Section 8 tenants included, are likely caught in a vicious cycle of unfounded fears confirmed, in many of their minds, by the experience and reporting of targeted enforcement of low-income, African-American households.  Maybe what is needed, at least in part, is some anti-bias training for fearful residents of Antioch and its police officers in order to raise the impact of unconcious biases to the conscious level where they may be dealt with openly and Constitutionally.

E-Newsletter 3.6 – The Intersection of Criminal Law, Race, and Poverty Law Practice

September 27, 2008 | ElektroMoose | Tags: ,

Welcome to the eighth iteration of our quarterly e-newsletter! Our last e-newsletter on the implication of social cognition, implicit bias, and situationalism to race equity work is a tough act to follow but this e-newsetter is one of the best ones yet. In this e-newsletter we’re going to explore the intersection of criminal law, race, and poverty law practice.

The three contributors to this e-newsletter each bring their own unique perspective on how criminal law, race, and poverty law practice intersect. We hope that you will find their articles informative and inspiring. Enjoy!

Fighting for the Employment Rights of Workers with Criminal Record, Jessie Warner, Staff Attorney, National Employment Law Project.

Lake Worth, Florida, Settles Discriminatory Code Enforcement Case with Guatemalan Residents, Mona Tawatao, Regional Counsel, Legal Services of Northern California.

Targeted Enforcement of Section 8 Participants in Antioch, The Race Equity Project, Legal Services of Northern California.

Do you have an idea for a future e-newsletter? Would you like to share the race-based work that you are doing with other interested in achieving race equity? Drop us an email. We would love to hear from you!

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