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May 14, 2024
New Death Penalty Information Center report presents racialized view of Ohio's capital punishment history
The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) today published this new report on Ohio capital punishment history titled "Broken Promises: How a History of Racial Violence and Bias Shaped Ohio’s Death Penalty." In this press release about the report, DPIC asserts that it "does not take a position on the death penalty itself," but all of its work clearly draws from an anti-capital punishment perspective. This report is quite critical of Ohio's capital punishment history and current state as reflected in this description of the report from portions of the press release:
As Ohio legislators debate expanding or repealing the death penalty, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) today released a report that documents how racial bias and violence affected the past use of the death penalty in Ohio and how that history continues to influence the current administration of capital punishment in the state. None of the reforms recommended by a bipartisan task force 10 years ago to reduce racial disparities in capital cases have been adopted.
The report, “Broken Promises: How A History of Racial Violence and Bias Shaped Ohio’s Death Penalty” and “Five Facts You Should Know About Ohio’s Death Penalty” are available at this link....
As the report documents, racial discrimination is the throughline that runs from the state’s founding to its application of capital punishment today. For example, from the early 19th century, Ohio’s Black Laws imposed legal restrictions on the rights and status of Black people in the state, including barring Black people from jury service. In 1807, Ohio adopted a “Negro Evidence Law” which prohibited Black people from testifying against white people, establishing a legal double standard. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, lynch mobs tortured and killed Black men after accusing them of raping white women without evidence. Even when photos were taken in broad daylight of lynch mob participants, they rarely faced legal consequences for these extrajudicial murders.
As the report reveals, race, especially the race of the victim, continues to play an outsized role in Ohio’s death penalty system. For example, homicides involving white female victims are six times more likely to result in execution compared to those involving Black male victims, despite the majority of murder victims in the state being Black. Similarly, a study of aggravated murder charges in Hamilton County shows that prosecutors are four and a half times more likely to seek the death penalty if there is at least one white victim, compared to similar cases without white victims....
“Broken Promises” builds upon DPIC’s 2020 report, “Enduring Injustice: The Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty.” It is the fourth in a series of reports detailing how individual state histories of racial injustice affect the current use of capital punishment. In 2023, DPIC released “Doomed to Repeat: The Legacy of Race in Tennessee’s Contemporary Death Penalty” and “Compromised Justice: How A Legacy of Racial Violence Informs Missouri’s Death Penalty Today.” In 2022, DPIC released “Deeply Rooted: How Racial History Informs Oklahoma’s Death Penalty.
May 14, 2024 at 02:07 PM | Permalink
Comments
All race all the time.
Stop.
Or tell us what race has to do with executing Timothy McVeigh.
Posted by: Bill Otis | May 14, 2024 2:51:09 PM
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ashley-biden-leaked-diary-accusation/
Joe showered with his daughter.
And all of the victim's race nonsense can be attributed to geography. Places where African-American victims are concentrated tend not to like the DP.
Posted by: federalist | May 14, 2024 3:23:04 PM
Bill,
I agree that the problems with the DP do not end with race. The unnecessary inhumanity of this form of state imposed violence as well as the state's inability to get the basics right (guilt/innocence) rank pretty highly for me, along with the DP's racism. I'd be glad to see greater emphasis on these themes.
On the inhumanity point, even if we can find examples of people who may deserve whatever is coming to them, no matter how awful (McVeigh counts, at least based on what I know), that's pretty different than saying we should give it to them.
Posted by: John | May 14, 2024 5:58:06 PM
Racism absolutely impacts the criminal system and should not be ignored. The study shows that the majority of death penalty cases in Ohio involve a white victim despite that fact that black males comprise the majority of homicide victims. It's clear the race, and gender, of a defendant has some influence regarding whether a case goes capital.
Posted by: Anon | May 14, 2024 11:16:44 PM
John --
"[E]ven if we can find examples of people who may deserve whatever is coming to them, no matter how awful (McVeigh counts, at least based on what I know), that's pretty different than saying we should give it to them."
We shouldn't give criminals what they deserve???
Far out! That sums up the defense bar as well as I've ever seen.
Posted by: Bill Otis | May 14, 2024 11:47:18 PM
Doug, here's one for you.
https://reason.com/2024/05/14/alabama-man-faces-jail-time-for-refusing-to-apologize-to-a-cop-for-cursing-during-traffic-stop/
John, you are an idiot. You cannot look at Ohio as a whole and deduce racism in the death penalty, as there are 90 odd counties in Ohio, each of which makes their own decisions when it comes to DP. There are resource constraints on certain counties, given the volume of murders etc. etc. Plus, in counties where black victims are concentrated, there is generally less support for DP. So have you always been this stupid, or did you have to work at it?
Posted by: federalist | May 15, 2024 9:20:02 AM
federalist --
Correct. Whether Mr. X should get the death penalty depends principally on what Mr. X did. Just broadly proclaiming that "Ohio is racist!" is good sloganeering but atrocious law.
Probably the best example of this is the Dylann Roof death penalty case in South Carolina. That state has more of an unfortunate racial history than Ohio by a fare-thee-well. But it would be worse than upside-down -- indeed it would be crazy -- to claim that, "South Carolina is racist," therefore we cannot apply its death penalty to a bloodthirsty white man who gunned down BLACK worshipers in their own church.
Sloganeering is really a poor substitute for thinking.
Posted by: Bill Otis | May 15, 2024 10:45:51 AM
Bill, the funny thing about SC is that a huge percentage of its executions have been white on black murders.
John is a stupid man.
Joe took showers with Ashley. Sick bastard.
Posted by: federalist | May 15, 2024 11:31:50 AM
Just curious about your South Carolina accounting, federalist. A (too) quick scan of DPIC data seemed to show only 5 executions in modern times of white murderers with only black victims, with double that number (10 executions) of black murderers with only white victims. And 28 other executions were same race and/or had victims of multiple races. Are you drawing on other data?
Posted by: Doug B | May 15, 2024 11:54:20 AM
"the funny thing about SC is that a huge percentage of its executions have been white on black murders."
This comment intrigued me so much I visited the Death Penalty Information Center to review the statistics myself.
From 1976-2011, 11 black people convicted of murder white people were executed. However 7 whites were executed after being convicted of murder a black person.
Furthermore from 1900-1999 176 black people were executed for murder convictions as opposed to 55 white people for the same offense.
Posted by: Anon | May 15, 2024 11:57:01 AM
Bill, others,
Would you have been okay boiling McVeigh alive? If not, does that mean you don't think he'd deserve it?
Posted by: John | May 15, 2024 12:28:26 PM
John,
Only if he showered with Ashley Biden LOL
Otherwise, hangin' wouldve been good enough! MAGA
Posted by: MAGA 2024 | May 15, 2024 12:43:53 PM
Anon, I was talking about post 1976. Obviously, given the wide disparity between B/W murders and W/B murders, the SC data point is interesting. White on black capital murders are very rare, yet comprise over 10% of executions in SC since 1976.
Doug, surely you know this; so I don't understand the "only" descriptor. Sorry for bringing up the Ashley Biden shower thing. I think that settles our morality argument Obama v. Trump. Obama supported Biden and Coakley . . . .
John, maybe you could address the substantive problems with your analysis?
Posted by: federalist | May 15, 2024 12:52:10 PM
The substantive problem with suggesting that there may be other values that desert? I don't think there is a substantive problem with allowing for grace and redemption or restraining our own impulses to mete out the harshest penalties we can justify for every wrong. But I'm obviously not as bright as you bros.
Posted by: John | May 15, 2024 12:59:24 PM
Nice try, John. How do you address the issues about the basis of your conclusion that Ohio's DP is racist?
Posted by: federalist | May 15, 2024 1:17:21 PM
Doug,
Federalist’s link is exactly why 1A auditing is necessary and useful. The “fighting words” doctrine is long established. The judge is a tyrant.
Posted by: TarlsQtr | May 15, 2024 3:01:53 PM
Master Tarls: seems like the problem in the case you mention is carceral-minded judges in Alabama (a state with historically high prison/jail rates), and disrespect for the 1A rights of a criminal. I wonder if Alabama prosecutors might start working on First Amendment waivers to be part of traffic offenses. Not sure what a 1A audit of police will do about carceral judging and disrespect of criminal rights, but I certainly agree this is yet another example of excessive use of state power.
federalist: you asserted that a "a huge percentage of [South Carolina] executions have been white on black murders." I was struck by that claim, and research proved it was false, as only a small percentage of SC executions have been W/B murders. Now you seek to recast the claim by asserting that a small but disprortionate percentage of SC executions are W/B. Do you have data to back this up? Can you point to data on W/B capital crimes from roughly 1980 to 2011? Since your moral paragon seems to be Donald Trump, federalist, I hope you can see why I am eager to check the facts behind your claims. You may be accurate this time, but I am interested in the actual numbers now.
Posted by: Doug B. | May 15, 2024 3:35:38 PM
There goes the Doug miasma again--trying to deflect from your errors. First of all, every single crime victim survey I have read shows that (non-Hispanic) white on black murders are very rare on a relative basis. Do you seriously dispute that? If so, then let's hear it. Do you remember the David Paternostro (sp.?) study regarding Maryland--non-Hispanic white on black murders were vanishingly rare. Same is true in everything I read (although I don't really focus on this--I despise violent criminals, so I don't really focus on race).
SC chooses to execute W/B murders far out of proportion to their actual numbers--that's what I was getting at, and "huge" is a fair characterization, and it's a far more fair characterization than your "only" characterization. Of course, I don't think that really proves anything. Very few executions, i.e., small sample size.
Posted by: federalist | May 15, 2024 4:53:09 PM
And also, Doug, context matters. The issue was purported black victim discrimination--well, I identified a Southern state that executes whites for killing blacks far out of proportion to the incidence of those racial particulars.
Posted by: federalist | May 15, 2024 5:02:01 PM
John --
"Would you have been okay boiling McVeigh alive?"
No.
"If not, does that mean you don't think he'd deserve it?"
It would mean I believe in obeying the law, which does not permit boiling in oil.
Would you have been OK with a three year sentence, with a requirement that he get anger management? Sure you would, although you're not about to admit it.
Posted by: Bill Otis | May 15, 2024 6:51:36 PM
Bill,
So we have at least one competing value beyond moral desert: lawfulness. Are there any others for you?
And no. I would not have been okay w/three years for McVeigh, at least on what I know about him and the case.
Posted by: John | May 15, 2024 8:55:12 PM
John --
Oh, OK. How about four years? Five? Wouldn't anything beyond that just be an expression of brutality and vengeance? Why or why not? What makes you better able to reach a fair judgment than democratically enacted law?
Other factors: Aggravating factors (e.g., especially heinous, cruel or torturous; murder for hire; witness murder; terrorist murder; child murder; mass murder and more) or mitigating factors (e.g., otherwise lawful life; actual (as opposed to faked) brain malfunction; acting under influence of a substance he didn't voluntarily take).
Posted by: Bill Otis | May 15, 2024 9:34:04 PM
federalist: words matter, and a "huge" percentage is much larger than just over 10%. (Hope you do not consider that percentage a "huge" tip.) Given the data, it would have been sounder to say a small but (likely) disprortionate percentage of SC executions are W/B. But it is true that national data does suggest that perhaps only 5% or less of murders are W/B, though for a rigorous analysis here we'd need data from SC focused on capital murders. In the end, your small sample size point is the soundest given than SC has executed less than 0.2% of all its murderers.
But I will certainly credit you for flagging SC's data here, which is quite interesting compared to national execution data. DPIC reports only 21 total executions for W/B murders nationwide since 1976, so SC is responsible for nearly 25% of those executions while only conducting about 2.5% of all executions. (DPIC reports 299 total executions for B/W murders, and I do not think I've seen any data suggesting B/W capital murders are 14 times more common than W/B murders.)
Posted by: Doug B | May 15, 2024 10:25:28 PM
The word "huge" may not have been the bestest word choice evah, but it still works, unlike "only." Huge can be taken in the comparative sense too. It's been a while since I looked at the cases, but I think like three of them involve the murder of a child.
It is remarkable--isn't it? A Southern state--going against what one might presume.
The disparity between white criminal activity and black criminal activity, in my view, isn't really important. To me, it should really only come up to rebut associating whites as a whole with the actions of a few.
I suspect some of the disparity in executions results from the jury system--there was a W/B murder in NC years ago where a holdout kept the guy off the row. But also, I think that you have to look at the jurisdictions on a county by county basis to get good explanations.
Posted by: federalist | May 16, 2024 9:07:05 AM
All reasonable/sound points, federalist, and if we are analyzing executions rather than death sentences, we would also needs to examine the possible impact(s) of race on the paths between a death sentence and execution. DPIC data show about an equal number of B amd W murderers on death rows, but a much larger (perhaps "huge") number of whites executed relative to blacks. I often suspect race may play a (subtle?) role in who ends up at the front of lines from death row to the execution chambers leading to more whites getting executed.
That all said, the SC data is still fascinating, and you rightly flag that still other factors like the age (and gender) of the victims are likley also important factors. The criminal history of the murderer also, surely, makes a difference and often is not part of a lot of racial analyses. And the numbers a now so small, there is a limit to what insights we might reasonably draw from a few cases.
Posted by: Doug B | May 16, 2024 9:34:48 AM
I think we can call this one!
Posted by: federalist | May 16, 2024 12:23:42 PM
