Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - 17 Times Less Likely to Be Executed? Is It Inequality?
View Single Post
 
Old 08-05-2020, 12:09 PM
Heyitsrick Heyitsrick is offline
Senior Member
Join Date: Feb 2012
Posts: 248
Thanks: 5
Thanked 312 Times in 132 Posts
Default

This study linked by the OP is a study advancing the work done by Professor David Baldus, et al., in 1983. Baldus researched death penalty convictions and executions in Georgia during the 1970's, and found disparities in the racial makeup of those actually executed, based on whether a murder victim was black or white.

First, the time period here was the 1970's. One can only hope that things might be different today than over 40 years ago in Georgia.

I read this paper. We all see things through the our own biases and filters, of course, but I did find the authors jumped through some hoops to make their case at times. For example, they reclassified / modified the stats on a person executed for killing a black individual because that person had also killed a white individual. In actuality, the killer (William Henry Hance) killed two black women and one white woman, and was first sentenced to death for killing one of the black women. That sentence was overturned, but later a resentencing occurred.

The authors go on to say that whenever a white victim is involved, the police response is going to be much greater, and hence a nationwide manhunt ensued to find the killer.

Here's how they justify modifying this "black murder victim" to, instead, a "white murder victim":

"In a technical sense, Hance was sentenced to death and executed for a “case” involving a Black victim, Gail Jackson. In a practical sense, though, Hance’s “case” included three victims who were killed in the same manner during a crime spree, one of whom was a white woman. Considering the facts outlined above, we believe it is appropriate to treat Hance as a white victim case. Such a conclusion is consistent with social science research which has shown that executing an offender for a transgression against a “different victim” is not unprecedented."

The authors later agree that aggravating circumstances in the different murder cases could, in fact, result in why some were eventually executed for their murders and some not. Yet they then go to great lengths to try and quantify various aggravating factors that would portend why an execution would be warranted. It was kind of like you get one point for this factor, one point for that factor, etc. And, not surprisingly, they concluded that the aggravating factors of the cases weren't sufficient to warrant the difference in why more people were executed for white victim deaths than black victim deaths.

At the very start of the study, they state that anyone being executed for a capital crime in this country is quite rare:

"An unexpected feature of the modern death penalty is the fact that most persons sentenced to death are not executed. Between 1973 and June of 2019, more than 8,000 persons have been sentenced to death, but about 1,500 persons have been executed. Death sentences are remarkably poor predictors of who will ultimately be executed."

That's ~32 people / year who have been put to death.

I do take issue with the "17 times more likely to be executed" mantras. The numbers involved in both the original Baldus study and this one are, by any reading, quite small. If you had $17 and I had $1, I'm pretty sure neither of us would be rich.