Studies

A recent study published in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology about the U.S. Military death penalty system found that racial disparities among those sentenced to death are worse in the military than in other criminal courts.  The study, conducted by Catherine Grosso of Michigan State's College of Law, the late David Baldus of the University of Iowa College of Law, and others, reviewed all potentially death-eligible military prosecutions from 1984 to 2005 and identified 105 death-eligible murder cases. The study found that defendants of color in the military are twice as likely as white defendants to be sentenced to death. The researchers said the disparities against defendants of color “sharply distinguishes the military system from the typical civilian system” at a “magnitude that is rarely seen in court systems.” In typical studies on the civilian side, the likelihood of a death sentence increased when the victim in the underlying crime was white, and was even more pronounced if the defendant was a person of color. In U.S. military courts, however, discrimination based on the race of defendant - regardless of the race of victim - was more prominent. The researchers argued that limiting the military death penalty to the most aggravated and heinous crimes - e.g., murder of a commissioned officer or a premeditated attack on U.S. troops resulting in death - would reduce racial disparities. Grosso concluded, “If race is on the table, if it puts a thumb on the scale, that’s injustice.  These findings speak for themselves. They reflect how the military criminal justice system is operating, and it can do better.” Read the Study.

The first hearing under North Carolina's Racial Justice Act convened at the beginning of February for death row inmate Marcus Robinson. The Racial Justice Act was passed in 2009, allowing death row inmates to use empirical and statistical data to demonstrate racial bias in their conviction or sentencing. Following changes in North Carolina's legislature in the 2010 elections, there were efforts to repeal the Act.  Governor Perdue vetoed a repeal bill and the legislature could not override her veto.  Robinson, who is black, was sentenced to death for a 1991 murder of a white victim. He  is seeking to have his sentence reduced to life without parole by showing racial bias in the jury selection for his trial. Barbara O’Brien, an expert in this area from Michigan State University, testified that state prosecutors in capital trials excluded qualified black jurors at more than twice the rate of qualified non-black jurors. For Robinson’s jury pool, qualified blacks where 3.5 times more likely to be rejected. O’Brien said, “Being black does predict whether or not the state will strike the potential juror, even when controlling for these other variables.” Robinson’s hearing is expected to conclude by mid-February, and the presiding judge’s decision will shape the way the new law is interpreted in the future. Other studies in North Carolina have shown that those who murder white victims are more likely to receive the death penalty than those who murder black victims.

Roger Hood (pictured), Professor Emeritus of Criminology at the University of Oxford, has published a report on official attitudes towards capital punishment in China.  Abolition of the Death Penalty: China in World Perspective outlines the changes over the past decade on this issue within Chinese academic and judicial communities. Hood observed that one of the strongest justifications for the death penalty in China is “the belief that retribution based on the notion of ‘a life for a life’ was deeply embedded in Chinese culture; that ignoring this support might cause social instability; and that China [is] not yet sufficiently economically developed that it could do away with an effective criminal sanction.” Nevertheless, Hood points out that despite secrecy around the country’s death penalty, “no one can doubt that a movement towards restriction and eventual abolition has got under way.” He attributes the shift in attitudes on the death penalty to the emerging international narrative that suggests capital punishment should be treated not as “a weapon of national criminal justice policy,” but as “a fundamental violation of universal human rights: not only the right to life but the right to be free from excessive, repressive and tortuous punishments - including the risk that an innocent or undeserving person may be executed.”

A new study by the organization Together Against the Death Penalty examined the status of capital punishment in the U.S. through a series of interviews and visits to death penalty states in 2010. The report, 999 - The Death Penalty in the United States, was written by Arnaud Gaillard and it exposes some of the serious problems with capital punishment in this country from a human rights perspective. The report calls on decision-makers to take a closer look at the conditions of those awaiting execution and at the risk of arbitrariness in the implementation of the death penalty.  Gaillard wrote, “Indeed death rows are not full of innocents. Some of them have committed horrible crimes… When one looks closer, it is likely that the authors of the worst ills in American society are not necessarily the ones found on death row. With luck, sufficient funds and networks, the privileged have the means to escape the death penalty.” The report consists of empirical research, interviews and questionnaires from states like California, Utah, Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Virginia.