Capital Punishment System Is Still Racially Biased

¶ … Capital Punishment System is Still Racially Biased" by David A. Love asserts that the times when the death penalty tends to be administered is based on generally arbitrary, unfair and racially biased factors, and is seldom based on the merits of the case. One example that Love offers is the Racial Justice Act which is legislation in North Carolina that allows a death row prisoner to challenge their sentencing through the use of statistical evidence of racial prejudice in the nation.

The very fact that such legislation exists in America is a shining piece of evidence for the fact that our nation is indeed a very skewed one when it comes to racial inequality, and that there is a long history of the legal and illegal persecution of others according to race. Love demonstrates compelling evidence to demonstrate how capital punishment has long been an issue of race, with the bulk of death row prisoners being black or Latino men.

Geographically, the bulk of all capital punishments sites of administration have occurred in former states of the confederacy. Basically, this reading takes a firm stance on the issue of capital punishment and race in America, an issue that we've discussed at length via our readings, and states unequivocally that the means by which capital punishment is administered is just another manifestation of deep-ceded prejudice. It echoes one of the events of the case McClesky vs.

Kemp of 1987: McKlesky was a black man charged with killing a white police officer during an armed robbery, as part of his defense, he offered up a study which starkly demonstrated the racism present within the justice system: the study looked at over 2,000 murder cases that were tried in George during the 1970s.

The researchers found that if a black man was accused of killing a white man, he would be sentenced to death 11% of the time; if it was the opposite, they would be sentenced to death 1% of the time: this is an undeniable piece of evidence for the sheer prejudice inherent within the justice system. When it comes to my opinion on the topic, I deeply believe that the entire justice system is skewed so that it too easily allows the persecution of minorities.

If you visit any prison in the United States, you'll see that the bulk of all prisoners are ethnic minorities. Outside of capital punishment, "the war on drugs" in America has succeeded in locking up mostly African-American men; this too is just another living manifestation of the justice system. Viewpoint #2 The second viewpoint, "Racial Bias in the Capital Punishment System has Decreased over time" by Charles Lane, takes the opposite viewpoint.

Essentially, Lane asserts that in recent years there have been so many minority advocates in opposition to the death penalty, and so many outspoken critics of the death penalty who have lobbied for more just sentencing, that the prejudiced use of the death penalty has been minimized in recent years. Lane argues that there has historically been a skewed disparity in the manner in which people receive sentencing, with people of a darker skin color being on the receiving end of the bulk of all capital punishment sentences.

However, Lane argues that the statistics show undeniable progress. Furthermore, Lane argues that the case Fuhrman vs. Georgia had an intensive impact in minimizing racism, as it forced states to purge themselves of the inconsistent standards which were largely race-based and which contributed to their general lack of just rulings.

This particular article fits in with the over themes that we've been examining, in that it takes a firm stance on capital punishment and the issue of race, asserting that while the past has absolutely demonstrated unequivocal prejudice, that there's still been marked progress. I personally would disagree with this opinion. While there might be superficial signs of progress that the real changes would manifest when few African-American.