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Capital Punishment Issues
The inconsistency and discrimination issues related to capital punishment are that, first, it is unevenly applied to all persons and, second, it is more commonly supported by Whites than it is by African-Americans (Unnever, Cullen, 2007). The concept that criminal justice and capital punishment are a good fit for one another is not a concept that African-Americans tend to promote; yet the underlying cause of their lack of support is rooted in their view of the criminal justice system itself -- which is generally regarded among them as being more unjust than just, especially with respect to African-American lives. For Whites, on the other hand, capital punishment is viewed as a legitimate form of punishment within the system -- one that works and one that should be doled out to those who deserve in order to maintain society's integrity.
Yet, the problem of capital punishment is that it tends to be unevenly distributed among convicts -- or, at least, the African-American community feels that it is targeted more than other communities -- namely, White ones (Unnever, Cullen, 2007). The inconsistency with which it is given as a punishment, moreover, does not even need to be assessed in racial terms -- it can be assessed in terms of the crime committed. In some cases,...
Consistency in the criminal justice system is not a strong suit. As for discrimination, this is felt most strongly among the African-American community, which is not surprising considering its high ratio of members of its community who are arrested and imprisoned by adulthood.
I think that the main issues of disparity and discrimination in applying the death penalty are fundamentally related to this country's history and inherent racist attitudes that stem from the WASP origins of the nation's Founding Fathers. The elites who essentially founded the country and its ruling ideological basis were essentially all White Anglo-Saxon Protestants or WASPs -- and their view of themselves and the rest of the world was much like the way the Jews view themselves as God's chosen people. For instance, the early Americans felt that it was their Manifest Destiny to take over the lands of the New World and exterminate anyone or any races that got in their way. Thus, the…
References
Unnever, J., Cullen, F. (2007). Reassessing the Racial Divide in Support for Capital
Punishment. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 44(1): 124-158.
Statistics show that black murderers are far more likely than white murderers to get the death penalty, especially if the victim was white. Blacks make up 12% of the population but 40% of the population on death row, as noted. Georgia can serve as a case in point. Statistics show that a black man accused of killing a white person in Georgia is substantially more likely to receive the
However, on the contradicting side, the question is "Can death penalty really deter criminals?." Several studies show it does not. An online source indicates the following evidences. From 1976 to 1996, the number of executions per year in the United States has increased from 0 to just under 60. The homicide rate per 100,000 population has remained constant at just under 10. Criminologists who belong to the American Society of Criminology,
Studies consistently and generally show that, all factors held constant, the race of the accused is a critical variable in determining who will be sentenced to death. Black citizens are, thus, subjected to double discrimination. From initial charging decisions to plea bargaining to sentencing by the jury, Black defendants receive harsh treatment and, as victims, their lives are given less value than whites. Most juries still consist of all
A good example is the 1985 murder of convenience store clerk Cynthia Barlieb, whose murder was prosecuted by a district attorney bent on securing execution for Barlieb's killer (Pompeilo 2005). The original trial and all the subsequent appeals forced Barlieb's family, including four young daughters, to spend 17 years in the legal process - her oldest daughter was 8 years old when Cynthia was first shot, and 25 when
" This article puts forward the notion that when analyzing the "...relationships between minority groups and mainstream populations," the issue of whether the use of "formal control is applied fairly and consistently between these different groups" is a pivotal place to begin (Ruddell, et al., 2004). It is pivotal because "injustice" not only can have "a corrosive effect" on the perception of the fairness (or unfairness) of the criminal justice system;
Death Penalty Evolution of the Death Penalty in Supreme Court Jurisprudence Capital punishment has been in existence for centuries. As early back as the Eighteenth Century B.C., the use of the death penalty was found in the Code of King Hammurabi (Death Penalty Information Center [DPIC], 2010). The utilization of the death penalty for designated crimes continued through the years and became incorporated in Britain's penal system (DPIC, 2010). Britain's use of