Is the death penalty racially bias?

So I previously came to the conclusion that the death penalty is in fact gender bias, but now, with even further research, I've learned that it's not only gender bias, the death penalty is also racially bias. However, I was not as surprised as I was about the gender bias, and honestly this should come as no surprise to anyone who pays attention to the news across the country or perhaps even local news, institutional racism is still very much a thing in the United States, and it rears it’s ugly head here in the death penalty, and while we cannot change the ugly past the United States has with race, we can change it’s future. The issue of race and the death penalty has been clear for quite some time, with Justice Harry Blackmun even explaining in his 1994 dissent from the court’s refusal to hear the death penalty case Callins v. Collins that “the biases and prejudices that infect society generally influence the determination of who is sentenced to death, even within the narrower pool of death eligible defendants selected according to objective standards.”(“Racial Bias” 1)  So if a Justice on the Supreme Court can acknowledge the fact that the death penalty is subject to “the biases and prejudices that infect society” why are we still talking about it twenty-three years later? Well, as I previously stated, the majority of the literature about this topic focus solely on whether the constitution supports the death penalty or not, but the constitution was written in 1787 by slave-owning men, so how can you look to the constitution to protect those who had absolutely no rights, and were considered property rather than actual human beings at the time it was written? Every time they will find a loophole to support their claim, and if you look at the history of the debate, they succeed every time. However, there is no way of finding a loophole around stone cold statistics. Ninety-six percent of states where studies examined race and the death penalty, they found clear patterns of discrimination(“Cruel & Unusual: The Death Penalty V. The Eighth Amendment ” 1). African-Americans account for fifty-one percent of homicide victims, and whites account for forty-six percent. However, fifteen percent of executions are for African-american victims, and seventy-six percent are for white victims.(1) How is it that African-Americans account for five percent more of the nation's homicides, yet white victims account for sixty-one percent more of executions. Looking at this evidence here, any normal human being can clearly come to the conclusion that the death penalty has a clear racial bias, and that it is unjust and wrong.

Works Cited:

"Cruel & Unusual“  Cruel & Unusual: The Death Penalty V. The Eighth Amendment. Criminal Justice Degree Hub, n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2017.

"Racial Bias." Racial Bias | National Coalition to. National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2017.

Is the death penalty gender bias?

Is the death penalty gender bias? The research I've done seems to indicate that it is. The first woman executed, Velma Barfield, was executed in 1984(“Introduction to the Death Penalty” 1). Since then, only fifteen other women have been executed, with the fifteenth being executed on September 30th, 2015. She was sentenced to death in 1998 after she had convinced her boyfriend at the time shoot her husband(Oliver, 1).Since the reinstatement of the death penalty, one thousand three hundred and ninety-nine men were executed. In October of 2014, there were three thousand thirty-five people on death row, and out of that only fifty-four of them were women.(1). These numbers are alarming when you consider the fact that women make up roughly ten percent of the murders committed, but only account for one percent of the executions via the death penalty("Part I: History of the Death Penalty." 1). We still live in a very male dominated society here in the United States, with many people still looking down on women and not really acknowledging them as equals compared to men, and this seems to be the case here when it comes to death penalty sentencing. Often times jurors will look at a woman and see her as emotionally fragile, and may even sympathize with her more than they would a man. According to Ohio Northern University Law Professor Victor Streib, “It’s just easier to convince a jury that women suffer from emotional distress or other emotional problems more than men.”(Qtd. In Oliver, 1). It’s also worth noting that the rule books judges abide by when sentencing people to death or other sentences, was essentially written in it’s entirety by old white men. The way society views men and how we expect men to act and behave also plays a part in this. In order to be a ‘manly man’ per se, you must be dominant, strong, and protective. Women are considered weaker and inferior, so it is your job to protect them and look out for them, so sentencing women to death would go against all of these values you’re familiar with. I think the solution to this bias is simply just embracing feminism, and allowing the movement to grow and take shape, so that there can actually be equality in the justice system.

Works Cited:

Oliver, Amanda."The Death Penalty Has a Gender Bias." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 01 Oct. 2015. Web. 226 Apr. 2017.

"Part I: History of the Death Penalty." Part I: History of the Death Penalty | Death Penalty Information Center. Death Penalty Information Center, n.d. Web. 26 Apr. 2017.