News and Developments 2008: Race

Research on death qualification--the selection of jurors who are qualified to serve on a capital case because they are willing to sentence someone to death--has revealed additional characteristics among such jurors.  Professor Brooke Butler of the University of South Florida in Sarasota has studied such jurors and published her results in the journal of Behavioral Sciences and the Law. Her study, “Death qualification and prejudice: the effect of implicit racism, sexism, and homophobia on capital defendants' right to due process,” surveyed 200 juror candidates from the 12th Circuit in Bradenton, Florida.  In addition to the questions that measured their support for the death penalty and their death-qualification status, she studied their attitudes towards women, gays, and people of other races.  The results indicated that as death penalty support increased, participants exhibited more negative attitudes towards women, homosexuals, and people of other races.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens took the occasion of the Court's denial of review to a death row defendant in Georgia to question the adequacy of the appeals process in that state. On October 20, the Supreme Court denied certiorari in Walker v. Georgia, an appeal from the Georgia Supreme Court, and Justice Stevens concurred in that denial. However, Justice Stevens said he found the lack of careful scrutiny by the lower court to be "particularly troubling," especially since the case involved a black defendant and a white victim. Justice Clarence Thomas also wrote separately in the case, sharply disagreeing with Justice Stevens, and maintaining that no proportionality review by the Georgia Supreme Court was constitutionally required.

Justice Stevens wrote:

I find this case, which involves a black defendant and a white victim, particularly troubling. . . Rather than perform a thorough proportionality review to mitigate the heightened risks of arbitrariness and discrimination in this case, the Georgia Supreme Court carried out an utterly perfunctory review. Its undertaking consisted of a single paragraph, only the final sentence of which considered whether imposition of the death penalty in this case was proportionate as compared to the sentences imposed for similar offenses.

A new study of the death penalty in Arkansas showed racial patterns in sentencing. University of Iowa law professor David Baldus’ study examined 124 murder cases filed in one district from 1990 to 2005. Even after adjusting for factors such as the defendant’s criminal history and circumstances of the crime, black people who killed white people were more likely than others to be charged with capital murder and be sentenced to death. “It suggests

On June 4, Georgia has scheduled the execution of Curtis Osborne. (UPDATE: Osborne was executed on June 4.) Osborne's own defense lawyer at trial was racially biased against him and failed to do the most basic investigation that might have saved his client's life. The attorney repeatedly referred to Osborne with a racial epithet, saying, "that little n____r deserves the chair."

At the time of the murder that sent Osborne to death row, he was suffering from mental problems and his family had a history of mental illness going back for 3 generations. However, Osborne's attorney failed to raise this issue.

Law enforcement officials and religious leaders who have come to know Curtis Osborne have noted his complete remorse for the crime and the dramatic changes in his life while on death row. His story is recounted in a video prepared by his current defense attorneys. (Posted May 28, 2008).

View the video with Windows Media Player. View the video in QuickTime.