It’s some kind of warped annual media tradition. Every year around this time, the Justice Department releases its capital punishment report. Soon after, busy bee reporters opposed to the death penalty — are there any other kind? — begin twisting or selectively reporting the figures contained within it to paint a picture of vast racial discrimination. So, every year at this time, I take it upon myself to fill in the blanks in their reporting. Most people don’t realize that if you have all the facts on this issue, you can legitimately argue that the ultimate punishment is imposed in a racist manner upon either African-Americans or whites without contradicting yourself.
Let’s try it! To prove that black murderers are disproportionately being dispatched for their crimes, a reporter could report that, according to 2001 Justice Department statistics released in December, 25.7 percent of those executed in this country and 39 percent of those sentenced to death by juries were African-American, while blacks only make up 12.3 percent of the US population. To strengthen your argument, you could also point out that 43 percent of those on death row in 2001 were black. Then all you’d have to do is cap your article off with a whiny quote from somebody about how racially backward our country is and presto, you’ve done it.
Or you could take the opposite route. You could report that while whites make up only 69 percent of the US population, 72 percent of those executed in the US last year were white. You could add in the little-known fact that nearly half of the homicides in this country are committed by African-Americans, who make up 12 percent of the population, yet 57 percent of those sentenced to death for murder in 2001 were white as were 54 percent of those on death row. You could accurately report that once sentenced to death, black murderers fare better in the appeals process than whites do. Their death sentences are overturned more often and they tend to stick around longer. The average elapsed time from sentence to execution for African-American inmates was 2.5 years longer than it was for their Caucasian counterparts, according to the Justice Department. And it’d be worth mentioning that since 1976, there hasn’t been a single year in which more black murderers have been sentenced to death than white murderers. Then you wrap up your article with a whiny quote from someone about how it’s all so unfair and there you’d have it! A statistically sound argument that Caucasian killers are really the ones getting shafted by the system.
Of course, this is only the beginning of the fun you can have with these numbers because the above analysis only makes use of the 2001 report. If you use reports from years past and you put some effort into it, you can accurately show a growing trend of racial discrimination in how the death penalty is handed out — or a declining one. But don’t take my word for it, or anyone else’s. The statistics in the 2001 Capital Punishment Report and archived reports from previous years, located on the Justice Department website, are easily accessible and can provide hours of politically charged amusement for those who are so inclined.
But there’s one statistic you won’t find, the one that could really tell us what’s going on here. That still untracked statistic is in how many times those prosecuting capital cases in the US sought the death penalty, what the race of the defendant was when they did, the role the severity of the crime and the race of the criminal played in the decision, and whether juries across the nation award death sentences at a higher rate to those of a particular race.
As for me, well, I’ve sat behind the teenaged daughter of a murder victim and watched as her mother’s teary-eyed killer was executed by lethal injection and I’m still undecided on the death penalty. (She isn’t.) I am, however, passionately opposed to the widespread, dishonest racial manipulation of this issue by those who want to end capital punishment. The problem they create by unleashing only part of this story is that it leaks over from the death penalty debate to undermine relations between the races in this country. Ever listen to a debate on racial discrimination? The supposed racial bias in capital punishment will inevitably be used by someone to make his or her point. And more than likely, they’ll have no idea what they’re talking about.
What shouldn’t be lost in all of this but often is is the fact that in 2001, 15,980 Americans were murdered and the murderers should pay for it, no matter what their race.
This article appears in Jan 8-14, 2003.
