The book, The Death Penalty in America, provides a table from 1995; the total number of blacks on death row at that time was 1,246 versus 1,470, the total number of whites (Bedau 65-66). One thing to keep in mind is that blacks make up only 12.8% of our total population (D’Alessio & Stolzberg). Racism is a hateful word. Many people look the other way and deny its existence. But not only does it exist; it subsists in one of the most sensitive areas of our judicial system, capital punishment.
40In the Chattahoochee Judicial District of Georgia, described above, prosecutors used 83% of their peremptory jury strikes against African-Americans. Six black defendants were tried by all-white juries.41 Embracing a certain quotient of racial bias and discrimination against the poor is an inexorable aspect of supporting capital punishment. This is an immoral condition that makes rejecting the death penalty on moral grounds not only defensible but necessary for those who refuse to accept unequal or unjust administration of punishment." Death sentences are imposed in a criminal justice system that treats an individual better if she or he was rich and guilty than if that individual was poor and
FURMAN V. GEORGIA In the history of Georgia, as well as in the rest of the United States, execution, or what is better known as the death penalty, was the result of a defendant found guilty in such crimes as murder and rape. In 1972, in the case of Furman v. Georgia the U.S. Supreme Court placed a moratorium, which is a delay or suspension of an activity or law, on the sentencing of Furman for capital punishment. They made the decision to end it in 1976, with the case of Gregg v. Georgia. Several court officials wrote that the use of capital punishment was cruel and unusual and it violated the 8th and the 14th amendments set by the U.S. Constitution. They also expressed similar concerns that it was racially targeting black defendants.
Furman, a black male, while robbing a house was caught by someone in the house. When Furman tried to leave he tripped and the loaded firearm he was carrying went off killing one individual in the house. Furman went to trial and was found guilty of murder and sentenced to the death penalty. Furman appealed and took the ruling to the Supreme Court. Furman’s case was combined with two other black males when it went to the Supreme Court.
[pic] [pic] [pic] [pic] Medgar Evers Byron De La Beckwith (1963 & 1994) Bobby DeLaughter The assassin was white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the Ku Klux Klan and a man with an intimidating and violent personality. Beckwith was arrested, tried, and acquitted by an all white jury. Years later, in 1994, Assistant District Attorney, Bobby DeLaughter, reopened the case. This led to a retrial in which the jury convicted Beckwith, 31 years after the act, of assassinating Medgar Evers. The story of Beckwith's second trial is the subject of the 1996 film entitled Ghosts of Mississippi.
Rivkind/Shatz study in response to Furman: 1. 87% of murders (1988-92) were statutorily death-eligible 2. In 9.6% of cases, death sentences were sought 3. 11.4% of D-E murderers are actually sentenced to death v. Rivkind’s Concerns 1. DP is a powerful incentive for Δs to plead 2.
Trayvon Martin deserves justice for his unfortunate and appalling murder. 49 percent of the victims of murders are African American juvenile men. About 38.8 percent of the murders committed, the killer is not found and it goes unsolved. For this particular case we have the killer right in our hands and still Trayvon’s justice is being taken as a joke. We need to unite as an African American community and stand up and fight for the arrest of George Zimmerman.
Tison v. Arizona, 481 U.S. 137 (1987), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court qualified the rule it set forth in Enmund v. Florida. Just as in Enmund, the Tison Court applied the proportionality principle to conclude that the death penalty was an appropriate punishment for a felony murderer who was a major participant in the underlying felony and exhibited a reckless indifference to human life. This case stems from an infamous prison break during the summer of 1978. Gary Tison was serving a life sentence at the Arizona State Prison in Florence for killing a prison guard. His three sons plotted to break him and his cellmate, Randy Greenawalt, out of prison.
Its imperfectness was experienced after the Oklahoma City bombing when experts first thought the suspects were of Middle Eastern descent (Amnesty, 2006). The perpetrator of the bombing was actually a white American. After the 2002 Beltway killings of black citizens began, authorities focused on a white male acting alone, the typical profile of a serial killer, allowing the two black men committing these crimes to go unnoticed although their car license plate was checked many times (Amnesty, 2006). When racial or ethnic characteristics are the primary cause for targeting a person for criminal investigation criminal profiling becomes racial profiling. The term ‘racial profiling’ is a new term commonly associated with the old practice of discrimination and owes its existence to prejudice that has existed in this country since slavery (Racial, 2006).
The count here is 15 from northern cities, 8 from southern cities and 2 from western cities. So the “Southern subculture of violence” accounts of less than one third of the top 25 most violent cities in this country. And the two worst cities are very near where Dr. Sloan obtained his education. And when you peel back the facades that the politically correct crowd attempts to maintain, black on black crime is sadly the prime cause in many of the southern cities. Judge Marvin Arrington, a black judge in Atlanta, confirms that in Atlanta, African-Americans are 54 percent of the population, but are responsible for 100 percent of homicide, 95 percent of rape, 94 percent of robbery, 84 percent of aggravated assault, and 93 percent of burglary.