Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Tenth Circuit Blog

Criminal Law

: Tenth Circuit Blog

"The Racial Geography of the Federal Death Penalty" Article Discusses Geographic and Racial Distortions in the Federal Death Penalty

By Shari Allison

It is well known that Blacks and other minority group members are disproportionately over-represented on death rows across the US. Defendants are more likely to be sentenced to death for killing a white victim, and Black defendants are disproportionately executed. Less often discussed are the geographic disparities in the death penalty. Indeed, application of the federal death penalty is concentrated in just a few districts. A new article in the Washington Law Review addresses this geographical disparity and identifies a possible explanation. In The Racial Geography of the Federal Death Penalty, by G. Ben Cohen and Robert Smith, the authors discuss how federal prosecutors, in an effort to avoid trying death penalty cases in state jurisdictions with substantial minority populations, are increasingly taking cases to federal court...continue to full post

Full post as published by Tenth Circuit Blog on December 22, 2010 (boomark / email).