The NAACP will not back down in its fight to end capital punishment in America. In remarks made before a Senate Judiciary Committee sub-committee today NAACP leaders said capital punishment is ineffective, unfairly utilized and makes no financial sense.
"The NAACP remains resolutely opposed to the death penalty," said NAACP Washington Bureau Director Hilary Shelton. "The government's claim to the moral authority to exact the ultimate punishment is based on the belief that the punishment will be administered fairly and even-handedly. But even a cursory review of the death penalty at both the federal and state levels indicates that this is false."
Despite the fact that African Americans make up only 13 percent of the nation's population, almost 50 percent of those currently on the federal death row are African American. And even though only three people have been executed under the federal death penalty in the modern era, two of them have been racial minorities. Furthermore, all six of the next scheduled executions are African Americans.
The U.S. Department of Justice's own figures reveal that between 2001 and 2006, 48 percent of defendants in federal cases in which the death penalty was sought were African Americans.
The race of the victim also appears to play a role in the federal death penalty. According to a the American Civil Liberties Union's recent Capital Punishment Project report, under the tenure of the last three Attorney Generals, the risk of a federal death penalty authorization is 1.8 times higher in cases where the victim is white than in other cases. This disturbing trend is mirrored at the state level too. A recent study in California found that those who killed whites were greater than 3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who killed African Americans; and more than 4 times more likely than those who killed Latinos. Another study in North Carolina found that the odds of receiving a death sentence rose 3.5 times among defendants whose victims were white.
To the NAACP, the biggest argument against the death penalty is that it is handed out in a biased, racially disparate manner. "Race matters, whether it be the race of the defendant or the race of the victim," Shelton said. "And until it can be proven that race is not a factor in determining who is executed, Americans' faith in the criminal justice system, especially the confidence among African American communities, will continue to be dismal."
There are several other very valid arguments against the death penalty. The death penalty is not a cost effective punishment.
A 2005 study showed that in California, taxpayers paid $114 million per year beyond the costs of keeping convicts locked up for life. Taxpayers have paid more than $250 million for each of the state's executions.
The death penalty is not a deterrent either. According to the 2004 FBI Uniform Crime Report, southern states had the highest murder rate, despite the fact that 80 percent of all executions are in the South.
The NAACP is very concerned about the number of people exonerated since being placed on death row. Since 1973, more than 120 people have been released from state death rows with evidence of their innocence. The death penalty is the ultimate punishment, one that is impossible to reverse in light of new evidence.
The NAACP knows the reasoning behind these figures and disparities are complex but warrant greater examination. It is clear however, that at several different points in the process of determining who is tried in a federal death penalty case, a judgment is made by human beings in a process in which not everyone has similar views. This is borne out in the new ACLU study, which found that a far greater percentage of white defendants were able to avoid the death penalty through plea bargains, which can be attributed to the exercise of federal prosecutorial discretion. This point is mirrored at the state level, where 98 percent of the chief district attorneys in death penalty states are white and only 1 percent black.
"The American criminal justice system has been historically, and remains today, deeply and disparately impacted by race," Shelton added. "It is difficult for African Americans to have confidence in or be willing to work with an institution that is fraught with racism. The fact that African Americans are so overrepresented on death row is alarming and disturbing, and certainly a critical element that leads to the distrust that exists in the African American community of our nation's criminal justice system. Law enforcement executives and rank and file officers agree that crimes cannot be prevented or solved without a basic community trust of the police."
Wisconsin U.S. Senator Russ Feingold and others have repeatedly led efforts to end the death penalty at the federal level.
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