Selective prosecution and its implications for justice systems

¶ … Prosecution

The death penalty is an issue of great dispute in the United States. In addition to some states not accepting the death penalty as part of their legislation, the states that have legalized the death penalty face issues such as racism and a discrepancy in death penalty sentences for different racial groups. Such a case is the one of John Bass, a black man charged with the intentional murder of two persons by shooting. The argument below will show that the Supreme Court was incorrect in reversing the decision in favor of Bass's demand for a discovery motion.

The Supreme Court based its decision upon a the fact that Bass was basically too general in the evidence he presented towards death penalty charges being unbalanced in its negative bias for black people to receive the death penalty. Bass showed a number of statistics to prove that this was the case, and related these statistics to his own case to prove that the court was seeking the death penalty based on his race rather than his crime. The Court contested that he did not present evidence pertaining specifically to his case or to similar cases specifically involving white defendants. This argument is however not strong enough to support the ruling.

The Court holds that the defendant should "show both a discriminatory effect and a discriminatory purpose or intent" in order to uphold a selective prosecution claim. In order to determine the strength of Bass's argument, the statistics he presents should be examined. These statistics show that there has been a history of extreme racial discrimination, particularly against African-Americans, in the American justice system.

The statistics that Bass provide show that not only death penalty charges are disproportionate, also with regard to prison populations. The general federal prison population is for example fifty-seven percent white and thirty-eight percent black. Yet the number charged with death-eligible crimes is twenty percent white and forty-eight percent black. Furthermore, none of the seventeen defendants charged with such crimes in the Eastern District of Michigan were white. The statistics also show that plea bargain decisions are biased against black defendants. The United States for example entered into a plea bargain with forty-eight percent of white defendants, while doing so for only twenty-five percent of black defendants. Bass's statistics also show that there is a huge discrepancy between death penalty charges for whites and blacks: sixteen percent of whites are charged with firearms murder while thirty-two percent of blacks are charged with the same crime. These statistics clearly show that there is a racial bias in the system.

The Supreme Court claims that its reverse of the original decision in Bass's favor is overturned, because of a lack of evidence in the defendant's specific case, and the failure to show both a discriminatory effect and intent. However, this does not appear entirely true. The statistics speak for themselves. The fact that they pertain to country-wide cases is indicative only that the entire system is discriminatory with the specific intent of being so. This indicates a much wider problem than one pertaining only to the criminal justice system. Indeed, many events during the recent decades have made it clear that racial discrimination still plagues every area of American life, despite the fact that the Constitution guarantees equal rights for all.