Post at least a 200 word response to the following discussion questions. ARE YOU FOR OR AGAINST CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: YOU BE THE JUDGE There are four parts to this DQ: Two reading passages and two audio links. Make sure you read all the passages and listen to the audios before you answer the questions. Take your time, relax, and think through the questions carefully. The questions are in red at the end of the passage. Responses that answer all the questions and are submitted on time will receive a blue mark. Part One: From the Capital Punishment in Context Website capitalpunishmentincontext.org/issues/race Race and the Application of the Death Penalty Questions of whether or not the death penalty was applied fairly along racial lines surfaced in McCleskey v. Kemp. McCleskey argued that there was racial discrimination in the application of Georgias death penalty. As evidence for this claim, McCleskey presented the results of an extensive statistical study by Professor David Baldus of the University of Iowa Law School and his colleagues. Baldus’ study collected information about all the capital defendants in Georgia—whether or not they were sentenced to death. This information allowed the researchers to control for hundreds of variables about the offender, victim and crime—thereby permitting a statistical comparison of cases in order to see what factors influenced whether a person was sentenced to death. Professor Baldus found, among other things, that: 1. Fewer than 40% of Georgia homicide cases involve white victims, but in 87% of the cases in which a death sentence is imposed, the victim is white. White-victim cases are roughly eleven times more likely than black-victim cases to result in a sentence of death.¨ 2. When the race of the defendant is added to the analysis, the following pattern appears: 22% of black defendants who kill white victims are sentenced to death; 8% of white defendants who kill white victims are sentenced to death; 1% of black defendants who kill black victims are sentenced to death; and 3% of white defendants who kill black victims are sentenced to death. (Only 64 of the approximately 2500 homicide cases studied involved killings of blacks by whites, so the 3% figure in this category represents a total of two death sentences over a six-year period. Thus, the reason why a bias against black defendants is not even more apparent is that most black defendants have killed black victims; almost no cases are found of white defendants who have killed black victims; and virtually no defendant convicted of killing a black victim gets the death penalty.) 3. No factor other than race explains these racial patterns. The multiple-regression analysis with the greatest explanatory power shows that after controlling for non-racial factors, murderers of white victims receive a death sentence 4.3 times more frequently than murderers of black victims. The race of the victim proves to be as good a predictor of a capital sentence as the aggravating circumstances spelled out in the Georgia statute, such as whether the defendant has a prior murder conviction or was the primary actor in the present murder. 4. Only 5% of Georgia killings result in a death sentence; yet, when more than 230 non-racial variables are controlled for, the death-sentencing rate is 6% higher in white-victim cases than in black-victim cases. A murderer therefore incurs less risk of death by committing the murder in the first place than by selecting a white victim instead of a black one. The effects of race are not uniform across the spectrum of homicide cases. In the least aggravated cases, almost no defendants are sentenced to death; in the most aggravated cases, a high percentage of defendants are sentenced to death regardless of their race or their victims; it is in the mid-range of cases which, as it happens, includes cases like McCleskeys that race has its greatest influence. In these mid-range cases, death sentences are imposed on 34% of the killers of white victims and 14% of the killers of black victims. In other words, twenty out of every thirty-four defendants sentenced to die for killing a white victim would not have received a death sentence if their victims had been black. Part Two: For those of you who will argue that the information cited above is specific to Georgia or the south, the following passage is taken from Chapter 19 of investigating difference. The Demographics of Wrongful and Unlawful Conviction African Americans represent about 12% of the U.S. population, and about 19% of the population of the South. An analysis of 350 cases of wrongful and unlawful conviction conducted by Radelet, Bedau, and Putnam (1992) indicated that 43% (150) were black, and that blacks were more likely than whites to be wrongly convicted of capital crimes. Scheck, Neufeld, and Dwyer, (2000) examined 62 wrongful and unlawful convictions and found that 29% were white, and 57% were black. Radelet, Lofquist, and Bedau (1996) reviewed 68 death row cases and found that 45.6% of whites, 41.2% of blacks, and 13.2% of other minorities were wrongfully and unlawfully convicted. Harmon’s (2001) study of 68 cases emerging from 1970 to 1998 found that 58% of minorities had been wrongfully and unlawfully convicted. Important to her study was the revelation that only 10% of the victims were minorities. Parker, DeWees, and Radelet (2003) analyzed 107 death row exonerees since 1973. They found that nationally 45% were black, 42% were white, and 13% were other minorities. In the South, 63% of death row exonerees were black. Before you argue that the information about Georgia is specific to Georgia only or the South, please make sure you listen to all of the below: The link below is an excerpt from Justice Talking on the DP. For those of you who deny the existence of racism generally, but particularly in the use of the DP, please listen to this interview with Brian Stevenson. For those of you who believe the race of the victim in GA is an aberration, please listen to this interview. For those of you who will type one word about how racism is an operative in the south only, please see all the links below. Heres the excerpt: 128.91.58.209/JusticeTalking/mp3/070326_StevensonInterview.mp3 Heres the link for the entire DP show: justicetalking.org/ShowPage.aspx?ShowID=628 Part Three: Please make sure you listen to the following link, called Flawed Autopsies Send Two Innocent Men To Jail. npr.org/2011/06/01/133401716/flawed-autopsies-send-two-innocent-men-to-jail Part Four: Please listen to the following story, called The Child Cases: Guilty Until Proven Innocent. npr.org/2011/06/28/137454415/the-child-cases-guilty-until-proven-innocent The story above, Guilty Until Proven Innocent is part of a much longer documentary. The documentary is a longer video and it is fascinating, especially for anyone who is in or wants a future in criminal justice. If you have a chance, please watcth the entire documentary. You will find the link below. You do not have to watch the entire documentary to answer this DQ, but if you have the time, please watch the documentary before you approach the questions. video.pbs.org/video/2030394458 Now, here are the questions to be answered in this DQ: Once you have read all the information in this post and listened to the audio links, please address the following questions: Using both the reading passages and audio links above, explain why you are for or against the DP? Please make sure you discuss the reading and audio passages above in your response to this question. Did the audio passages above change your position on the DP? Why? Why not? If a white person killing a black person is least likely to receive the DP and a black person killing a white person is most likely to receive the DP, what does that tell us about how we value black and white life? Last question: Using the reading and audio passages above, can you be against racism and for the DP? Please use both the reading and audio passages above in providing your answers. Please do not respond to this DQ without addressing the above-quoted passages. Please do not post a response that does not respond to both passages quoted above.
Posted on: Thu, 30 Jan 2014 01:19:34 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015