Discrimination in Death Penalty

In Louisiana there is a serious discrepancy in the use of the death penalty for white and black criminals. An examination of all death penalty sentences imposed since 1976 in Louisiana found that capital punishment use is heavily impacted by race. In Louisiana a black man is 30 times as likely to be sentenced to death for killing a white woman than for killing a black man. Regardless of an offenders race death sentences are 6 times as likely when the victim is white rather than black. The Supreme Court was presented with a study that found people accused of killing white victims were four times as likely to be sentenced to death as those accused of killing black victims. The court ruled 5-4, that this did not demonstrate a constitutionally significant risk of racial bias.After retiring, the Judge who delivered the ruling opinion stated he should have voted the other way. In addition to being consistently racist it is also highly prone to error. For example, of the 155 death sentences the state handed down since 1976, 127, or 82% were later reversed. These errors are the result of major errors in trial that violate constitutional rights. While Louisiana's results are terrifying, many other states are not significantly better. Nationwide the reversal rate for resolved death sentences is 72 percent. The death penalty represents an irreversible level of punishment. for a system like this the level of error is unreasonable and immoral.

Editorial Board, (May, 9 2016). NYtimes.com. Louisiana's Color Coded Death Penalty. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/09/opinion/louisianas-color-coded-death-penalty.html