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Full-Text Articles in Law and Race
Police, Race, And The Production Of Capital Homicides, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Amanda Geller
Police, Race, And The Production Of Capital Homicides, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Amanda Geller
Faculty Scholarship
Racial disparities in capital punishment have been well documented for decades. Over 50 studies have shown that Black defendants more likely than their white counterparts to be charged with capital-eligible crimes, to be convicted and sentenced to death. Racial disparities in charging and sentencing in capital-eligible homicides are the largest for the small number of cases where black defendants murder white victims compared to within-race killings, or where whites murder black or other ethnic minority victims. These patterns are robust to rich controls for non-racial characteristics and state sentencing guidelines. This article backs up the research on racial disparities to …
Legislating Racial Fairness In Criminal Justice, Olatunde C.A. Johnson
Legislating Racial Fairness In Criminal Justice, Olatunde C.A. Johnson
Faculty Scholarship
Twenty years ago, in McCleskey v. Kemp, the Supreme Court rejected a capital defendant's claim that statistical evidence of racial discrimination in the administration of Georgia's death penalty system constituted a violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. Yet, even as McCleskey effectively bars constitutional challenges to racial disparities in the criminal justice system where invidious bias is difficult to establish, the Court invites advocates to pursue legislation as a remedy to racial disparities. Indeed, the McCleskey Court offers as a rationale for its ruling the judiciary's institutional incompetence to remedy these disparities, holding that "McCleskey's arguments are best …