In a recent study examining death sentencing trends around the country, researchers reported significant differences between the rates at which black defendants who kill white victims are sentenced to death, as compared to the rate at which black defendants who kill black victims are sentenced to death. In every one of the seven states for which data was available, blacks who kill whites were far more likely to receive a death sentence than blacks who killed blacks. Because the study used sentencing rates (e.g., the number of blacks sentenced to death out of the number of blacks who committed murder), the various rates can be legitimately compared. The numbers below indicate how many times greater the black defendant/white victim rate is compared to the black defendant/black victim rate in each state:
Georgia 22 times larger Indiana 8 times larger Maryland 22 times larger Nevada 4 times larger Pennsylvania 3 times larger South Carolina 23 times larger Virginia 18 times larger Arizona 9 times larger (in Arizona, the sentencing rates compared minorities who killed whites to minorities who killed minorities).
J. Blume, T. Eisenberg, & M. Wells, “Explaining Death Row’s Population and Racial Composition,” 1 Journal of Empirical Legal Studies 165, 197 (Table 8) (2004).