Refusal of Death Sentences for Color Bias

The Dallas Morning News distinguished itself this year by ending its 100 years of support for the death penalty. Today, it puts forth the argument that a history of color bias indicates the death sentence cannot be maintained. We need to encourage this courageous stand.

In general, capital punishment has been meted out somewhat arbitrarily in our country, with factors such as politics and geography affecting the level of justice a murder victim's family can expect. But one detail has been a consistent predictor of who lives and who dies – race. Specifically, the race of the victim appears to have a profound impact on a killer's punishment.

Although whites and blacks are murdered in almost equal numbers, killers whose victims are white are about four times as likely to pay with their lives. A mountain of studies has reached the same conclusion: The judicial system discriminates.

In fact, an analysis by the Death Penalty Information Center found that the statistical correlation between race and the death penalty is stronger than the link between smoking and heart disease. While research about cigarettes and health problems spurred legal and cultural changes, the capital punishment studies are gathering dust.
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Experts who have studied discrimination and the death penalty list an array of political and psychological factors that intrude on the judicial process. They point to all-white juries and mostly white prosecutors deciding whether black defendants should be put to death. They cite deep-rooted biases about race and class, tracing back to a time when certain crimes were punishable by death for blacks but not for whites. And they note the highly subjective nature of sentencing.

No doubt the reasons for the disparities are complex and not easily resolved. But instead of taking decisive action by calling a halt to this unfair punishment, Texas and other states continue to tinker with the apparatus of death. Right now, the Supreme Court is considering the merits of the particular cocktail of drugs used to dispense death sentences, but it is ignoring the bigger issue: Decades of evidence prove that the sentences are handed out unevenly and unfairly.

The underlying message is clear: Some lives simply are deemed more valuable by our deeply flawed justice system.

The commitment to ending injustice that is so palpable should be praised, and its principles need to be followed.

As a civilized society, we have to recognize injustice and end it.