Does Race Influence Death Penalty Decisions in CA?
The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice is trying to understand why California's prosecutors seek the death penalty in some cases but not in others. More particularly, the Commission wants to know if the race of the victim or of the defendant influences that decision.
Since capital punishment was reinstated in California in 1977, death sentences against black defendants, but not Latinos, have been disproportionately enormous by almost every measure: population, homicide rates, victim data and the sentencing patterns of other states. California's 5-to-1 ratio of blacks on death row to blacks in the state population, measured in percentages, is much higher than the ratios in Texas, Georgia, Alabama and South Carolina. The national average is 3 to 1. ...Twenty-four percent of the people arrested for homicide are black, but blacks make up 36% of the current death row population. Latinos are 46% of homicide arrestees but 20% of death row inmates.... In death sentences against all ethnic groups, 59% have involved a white victim. Yet whites are only about 22% of homicide victims.
Prosecutors have not been forthcoming in answering the Commission's questions. [more ...]
The commission was unable to find out what makes the difference partly because most county district attorneys refused to cooperate with Pepperdine University law school researchers employed to construct and conduct a survey. District attorneys in each county have their own standards and procedures for evaluating murder cases. But even those internal rules are kept secret in most counties.
If racism explains the greater willingness to pursue the death penalty when the victim is white, the blame may be shared by the police.
[B]ias may enter a case when police investigators work harder to collect evidence in the deaths of white victims.
It's difficult to test that theory, however, if prosecutors won't talk about why they seek death in some cases but not in others. Since the Commission can't induce prosecutors to cooperate voluntarily with its study, it is seeking legislation to compel prosecutors to explain their decisions.
[The Commission] recently called for legislation requiring prosecutors to collect and report all information on their decisions whether to seek the death penalty. The commission also wants courts and defense lawyers, as well as prosecutors, to collect and report information showing whether race affects the outcome of murder prosecutions.
The usual suspects oppose this perfectly reasonable proposal.
[T]he recommendation already is being opposed by police, prosecutors and victims' representatives, who say there's been no evidence of abuse by prosecutors in three decades of deciding which murders warrant the death penalty. The critics also don't want prosecutors to adopt formal, written, public policies on when they'll seek the death penalty, as the commission has recommended.
The statistical data may or may not constitute "evidence of abuse," but the numbers raise serious questions that shouldn't be so easily dismissed. And asking prosecutors to explain their decisions and to adopt uniform policies is simply a way of seeking accountability in a decision-making process that relies on unaccountable discretion. Is that too much to ask when the decisions involve life and death?
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