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The Death Penalty: Is Justice Colorblind?

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The Death Penalty: Is Justice Colorblind?

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For many years, the debate about whether or not the United States should continue to condone the death penalty has prevailed. In 1976, it was ruled through the Supreme Court that the death penalty is not in violation of the Constitution. In considering this practice as a whole, a study was conducted from 1983 to 1993 in courts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to determine whether or not there's a relationship between race and death sentences. The table above presents death penalty rulings out of certain numbers of cases in regards to both the race of the victim and the race of the defendant. Buried deep within this data presented by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC), a question arises: Is justice colorblind? Let's take a closer look.

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Before diving into any analysis comparing the percentages of white defendants and black defendants that received the death penalty, the pie chart above displays that out of 667 total cases, 521 involved a black defendant, and 146 involved a white defendant. Though not all of these cases resulted in the defendant being punished with death, it still goes to show how the sample sizes in the data that follows vary greatly between white and black defendants. There are about 3.6x as many cases involving a black defendant than there are involving a white defendant. However, does this data alone already display signs of bias?

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How Many Rulings ACTUALLY Resulted in the Death Penalty?

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How Many Rulings ACTUALLY Resulted in the Death Penalty?

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Again, in the mosaic plot above, we observe how the data displays that there were more cases with black defendants in the first place. However, now we can see that of the cases between black and white defendants, the black defendants portray a slightly higher percentage of death penalty rulings on top of their already high case numbers. Of the trials with black defendants, 18.6% resulted in a death penalty. As for the trials with white defendants, 12.3% concluded with the death penalty. While this 6.3% difference may seem extremely minimal, it can't simply be ignored in the grand scheme of things. If the races were really equal in the first place, there would be a fairly even number of trials between black and white people. Let's compare the data presented in the DPIC's table through other means of analysis in order to uncover additional evidence of racial bias.

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Black Defendants' Death Penalty Rulings: Higher than Philadelphia's Averages?

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Black Defendants' Death Penalty Rulings: Higher than Philadelphia's Averages?

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Between the period of 1983 and 1993, the span at which the DPIC's data was collected, 115 out of 667 cases independent of race resulted in the death penalty, whereas 552 didn't. When put into a percentage, this average of total death penalty rulings comes out to 17.2%. Knowing that 18.6% of trials including black defendants resulted in the same fate, it is clear that this number is above the average. Cases including white defendants sit at 12.3%, which on the contrary is below the average. Next, let's look at the conditional distributions between victim's race and defendant's race.

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As shown in the stacked bar chart above, when the victim was white, a clear difference can be seen in the outcome of the trial including a black defendant versus a white defendant. 21.2% of cases with a black defendant and a white victim resulted in the death penalty, whereas 14.0% of cases with a white defendant and a white victim resulted in the same. These conditional distributions allow us to further break down the data in proving that a clear bias can be seen.

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In addition to the cases with a white victim, here, we observe the most noticeable difference. 18.0% of trials with a black defendant and a black victim resulted in the death penalty, and a mere 4.0% of cases with a white defendant and a black victim had the same outcome. Overall, this 12.0% difference should not be taken lightly in retrospect. Considering the stacked bar chart above, as well as the previous one containing white victim percentages, we observe that the cases with a black defendant and black victim as well as those with a black defendant and white victim (18.0% and 21.2%) are higher than the cases of a white defendant with black victim and a white defendant with a white victim (4.0% and 14.0%).

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Conclusion: Minimal Bias is Bias Nonetheless

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Conclusion: Minimal Bias is Bias Nonetheless

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To recap on the findings analyzed throughout the course of this article, one cannot simply deny the fact that every death penalty percentage displayed surrounding a black defendant is higher than that of a white defendant. The marginal distribution of black defendants receiving the death penalty on trial is 18.6%, which higher than Philadelphia's average of 17.2% independent of race. The marginal distribution of white defendants receiving the death penalty is a mere 12.3%, clearly below the average. As previously mentioned as well, black defendants with black victims alongside black defendants with white victims saw 18.0% and 21.2% in death penalty outcomes, which is higher than the white defendant with black victims and white defendant with white victims percentages of 4.0% and 14.0%. While some may argue that the differences in these percentages are too minimal to argue that any bias truly exists, the consistency of the data shows that any bias at all should be recognized. When looking at the sample size of black defendants put on trial, this only further goes to show that racism is apparent when deciding who goes on trial for the death penalty. The fact that there were 3.6x more black defendants shows that they were convicted significantly more frequently. If the races were equal when it came to deciding who goes on trial in the first place, there would be a fairly similar number of black and white defendants. So what's the verdict? The justice system in Philadelphia is clearly NOT blind to the color of the defendants when it comes to the death penalty.