Racial Justice Act Advances in NC

By TChris, Section Death Penalty
Posted on Thu Jul 23, 2009 at 07:12:00 AM EST
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Despite statistical evidence demonstrating that the death penalty is more likely to be imposed when a homicide victim is white, the Supreme Court has been unreceptive to the argument that statistics offer sufficient proof that any particular death sentence is racially discriminatory in violation of a defendant's right to equal protection of the law. Statistical evidence that the defendant's race plays a key role in the imposition of the death penalty due to discriminatory attitudes of prosecutors who seek the death penalty or the judges and jurors who impose it is more ambiguous, but even if it were stronger, Supreme Court precedent would seem to foreclose its use to challenge a death sentence.

North Carolina is poised to adopt a law that would allow statistics to play a meaningful role in race-based challenges to death sentences. The Racial Justice Act (pdf) would permit defendants facing death sentences as well as death row inmates to use "statistical evidence or other evidence" to prove "that race was a significant factor in decisions to seek or impose the sentence of death in the county, the prosecutorial district, or the State at large." A defendant who succeeds in making that showing would (if not yet convicted) not be subject to a death sentence, or (if already sentenced to death) have the sentence converted to a life sentence without parole. [more ...]

The North Carolina House approved the bill last week.

The N.C. Senate previously approved a different version of the bill. Before it can become law, the House and Senate must agree on a single version.

A similar law was enacted in Kentucky in 1998. A federal version of the Racial Justice Act passed the House in 1994 but was rejected by the Senate.

While the law appears to permit proof by statistics alone that "death sentences were sought or imposed significantly more frequently upon persons of one race than upon persons of another race," thus establishing "that race was a significant factor in decisions to seek or impose the sentence of death," a defendant would still need to convince a judge that his race was "a significant factor." Some judges will be more receptive to statistical arguments than others, so if the law is enacted, its impact won't be clear for some time.

It's heartening to read about relatives of murder victims who, despite the loss of their loved ones, have expressed their support for the bill. They are keenly aware that (in the recent words of President Obama) "race remains a factor in this society." Race remains a factor in the administration of the death penalty, and the Racial Justice Act recognizes that reality, even if its efficacy as a remedy remains doubtful.

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Racial Justice Act Advances in NC | 7 comments (7 topical)

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Why Make It So Complex (5.00 / 0) (#2)
by squeaky on Thu Jul 23, 2009 at 09:05:51 AM EST

Just do away with the death penalty.

Statistical evidence (5.00 / 0) (#6)
by Steve M on Thu Jul 23, 2009 at 05:44:54 PM EST

is far more appropriate to take into consideration when fashioning a legislative remedy, than in the case of a jury which is charged with doing justice in a single case.

Let's stipulate for a moment that black defendants are disproportionately subjected to the death penalty in comparison with white defendants. Okay, so does that mean a given black defendant doesn't deserve the death penalty? Does it mean a given white defendant does? As a juror, how the heck am I supposed to process this evidence? As a judge reviewing a jury's verdict, how am I supposed to know if this particular verdict was tainted?

What I see here is a legislature passing the buck. We're too cowardly to make a determination ourselves about whether the death penalty should be abolished, so instead we're going to leave it to be sorted out on a case-by-case basis. Never mind that statistical issues like this one aren't amenable to a case-by-case resolution, I guess.

Don't count me (none / 0) (#1)
by JamesTX on Thu Jul 23, 2009 at 05:28:40 AM EST

for a moment among those who don't believe the criminal justice system and the the jury pool are racist. Juries and prosecutors kill people not because of how what they did weighs against the norm. They kill them because of who they are and the value they place on them relative to the victim. The practice is probably more pronounced in contexts viewed as less serious than the death penalty. That is, they also openly, and with less vehement denial, convict or acquit them for who they are, and hire them, or fire them, or whatever.

What I don't understand is how statistics has anything to do with it. I would think there is more potential to "prove" racial discrimination in many ways other than correlational statistics. For example, research on juries and decision making could show how the process is discriminatory, and leave very little doubt. Correlational statistics alone, especially when offered only in the context of descriptive research, leaves gaping holes of doubt and cries for alternative explanations.

When we start allowing inadequate evidence to serve as "proof" in the cases where we want it to work that way, then we have to pay the fiddler when the same inadequate method of "proof" is used against us.

There are much more scientifically sound ways of showing that White juries sentence African American men to death because of their race than trying to pretend that correlation between race and death sentences is causal evidence (regardless of how many thousands of other variables are "controlled"). All that does is establish our scientific illiteracy, and encourages more bad science to be accepted as "proof" in court.

If the simple isolated mathematical fact that more African American men are sentenced to death than White men is "proof" of racial discrimination, then the simple isolated mathematical fact that more CEO candidates who drive late model luxury cars are hired than CEO candidates who drive economy cars is "proof" that companies base their leadership decisions on the CEO's choice of automobiles.

I am not the enemy. I just think we always hurt ourselves in the end when we accept as valid evidence in support of a hypothesis data which don't actually support that hypothesis.

I don't understand (none / 0) (#3)
by shy observer on Thu Jul 23, 2009 at 10:20:54 AM EST

how you can say you don't understand how statistics has anything to do with it. What other "many ways" are there to prove racial discrimination that are admissible in court? It isn't like the prosecutor or judge or jury is going to blurt out a racial slur on the record during trial. The way that we determine whether there has been discrimination is by comparing the treatment of one group of people to another, correct? That is what statistical analysis does. We have a jury so they can determine the validity of such an analysis and its applicability. This is just one piece in the pie, but I see this as an advance, not a setback.


No (5.00 / 1) (#4)
by Abdul Abulbul Amir on Thu Jul 23, 2009 at 02:14:02 PM EST

The way that we determine whether there has been discrimination is by comparing the treatment of one group of people to another, correct?

No thats the way to make a bogus assertion. That may be a way to determine discrimination if the members of the two groups were identical in every relevant way.

In this case, as far as we know the revelevant facts are likely very different. Murder for hire rates are likely different, stranger murder rates are likely different, spousal murder rates are likely different.

In other words, if factors that a jury uses to impose the death penalty are unevenly distributed among racial groups then assigning the difference on the rate of imposition to race is nothing more than demagoguery.


: When was the last time (5.00 / 0) (#5)
by jondee on Thu Jul 23, 2009 at 03:32:52 PM EST

48 Hrs or 20/20 had an in-depth, investigatory report on the murder of a black person that had "the entire community scandalized"?

: The post hoc fallacy (none / 0) (#7)
by JamesTX on Fri Jul 24, 2009 at 02:12:38 AM EST

should be kept in advertising where it belongs!