Race on Sentencing in Capital Punishment Different

¶ … Race on Sentencing in Capital Punishment

Different nations and states have the crime categories that they categorize as worth the death penalty, these, in most cases are crimes that are considered to be serious and are directly against humanity or can accrue to situations that cost lives. These laws are however growing less popular with time and people are condemning them from individuals to the civil society with the sole reason that there is no room to correct the behavior for the criminal and on the basis of sanctity of life.

Within the U.S.A. death penalty majorly applies to the murder convicts and some other serious capital offences. It has been ruled by the Supreme Court that capital punishment is constitutional and not just some cruel and unusual punishment as provided for in the 8th and 14th amendments of the constitution (National Museum of Crime & Punishment, 2008).

Majority of the states are against the death penalty and each state has various measures that are meant to regulate the application of the penalty so that there is a prevention of possible execution of innocent people. This is one of the biggest undoing to the death sentence of capital punishment within the U.S.A.

Of the greatest concern in this context is the possibility of racism infiltrating the capital offence sentencing and from the trends in the recent past, can be said to be on the rise. The judgments seem to be influenced by the race the suspect comes from and hence the inclination toward the black suffering the greatest has been evidenced as will be discussed below.

According to American Civil Liberties Union (2003), in the 1980s prosecutors pushed for death row for 70% of the black defendants with white victims as compared to 15% of white victims with black victims. This serves to indicate that the likelihood of a person being subjected to capital punishment if the victim is white is higher than if the victim is black. It is also noted therein that of the 38 states that permit the death penalty, on average 98% of the prosecutors are white. The attorneys recommended 36% of cases with lack defendants for death penalty and yet only 20% of the cases with black defendants in the year 2000. This is an indication that this is a persistent trend that is not dying away any soon.

American Civil Liberties Union goes on to indicate that by 2003, out of every 18 prisoners who were listed on the federal death row, a staggering 16 of them were either African-American, Asian or Hispanic. Indeed between 1995 and 2000 of all the capital cases recommended by the U.S. attorneys, 80% of them involved people of color or from the minority groups. This percentage comes down marginally to 72% after the review by the attorney general, a statistics that speaks of the racial discrimination that exists within the justice system.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (2010), the latest statistics which was conducted in 2008 and compiled by William J. Sabol, Heather C. West and Matthew Cooper indicates that the rate of imprisonment of the black males was six times higher than that of the white males. This disproportionate inclination of the imprisonment also extends even in the present time to the death row victims.

The Department of Justice research had findings to the effect that the race of the victim greatly contributed to the determination of a case being capital offence case. It is indicated by Death Penalty Information Center (2012) that all-whit juries have convicted at least 20% of the black defendants who have been executed. There is further indication that of the level 5 severity, 25% of the black defendants received death penalty at the end of it as compared to only 5% of the white defendants.

Also noted is that for every 100,000 black males in America, there were 3,042 of them in prison. This was relatively high as compared to 1,261 Hispanic males in prison for every 100,000 Hispanic males, or even against whites whom for every 100,000 there were 487 male whites in prison. It is estimated that the chances of a black person going to prison in their lifetime is 16% as compared to 2% of a white person going to prison. This disparity begins right from the economic level and the predisposition to jobs.

This disparity between the races continues even after the defendant successfully serves the prison sentence and goes successfully through the justice system. It is estimated that on average, a white man has 34% more chances of getting a job than the 14% of the black person despite holding the same qualifications. This is further exacerbated by the fact that blacks have lesser chances of getting jobs after serving their time than the white counterparts and hence stand a higher chance of going back to prison, and this is how discrimination begets unfair justice system.