Academic

Baldus Redux - Race and the Death Penalty, Again

By firstamendmentblogger

A  new study to be published in the Houston Law Review this fall purports to provide statistical backing to what many in the criminal justice system would say is a no-brainer: race matters, especially when we're talking about who is sentenced to death.  As the New York Times reports this morning, the study surveyed cases in Harris County, Texas between 1992 and 1999 where its author, Professor Scott Phillips, found that for every 100 black and 100 white defendants, an average of 12 white defendants would be sentenced to death, compared with 17 black defendants.  Critics say the study is flawed in part because it "controls for stuff" other than race (which, um, I thought was the point?), but its findings shed new light on existing defects in a system that itself seems flawed at every pass. 

Here are a few more nuggets of information from Amnesty International about the death penalty in Harris County that give some context to the new study:

• If Harris County were a state, it would rank 26th in population but second in rates of execution (behind Texas itself).

• As of July 2007, Harris County had executed or sentenced to death the same number of defendants as had the next seven largest counties, those that include cities like Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, and San Antonio.

• Five million more people live in those seven counties than live in Harris County, and a hundred more murders are committed in those counties each year.  And yet, Harris County alone challenges their combined execution rate. 

Its been  more than 30 years since the SCT upheld the death penalty in McCleskey v. Kemp against overwhelming evidence that connected the likelihood of death to the victim's race.   Professor Phillips makes that same connection with the defendant's race.   Its doubtful these new findings would cause the present Court to seriously reconsider the merits of the death penalty, but its worth keeping in mind Justice Powell's admission upon retirement when asked whether in a given case he wished he could go back and change his vote.  Just one, he said, McCleskey.

-Kathleen A. Bergin

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on April 29, 2008 (boomark / email).