USA - Death Penalty Less Likely When Murder Victim is a Black Male.

Death Penalty Less Likely When Murder Victim is a Black Male. A forthcoming article in Politics, Groups, and Identities examines data on the victims in the underlying cases for every U.S. execution from 1976-2013. The article, "#BlackLivesDon’tMatter: Race-of-Victim Effects in US Executions, 1976-2013," finds, "Capital punishment is very rarely used where the victim is a Black male, despite the fact that this is the category most likely to be the victim of homicide." One particularly stark finding was that, of the 534 white defendants executed for the murder of a single victim, only nine had a black male victim. Although blacks make up about 47% of all murder victims, they make up only 17% of victims in cases resulting in an execution. The authors also compared intra-racial homicide data with the percentage of inmates executed for intra-racial murders. Although the vast majority of homicides were committed by someone of the same race as the victim, only 40% of executed black inmates were executed for killing a black victim. The authors conclude, "In the death penalty's modern history as in its use in previous eras, racial bias in its application is consistently high. In addition to the threat to the equal protection of the law that these numbers suggest, such overwhelming evidence of differential treatment erodes public support for the judicial system."