The Death Penalty and Race
In 1990 the United States General Accounting Office found that in 82% of all death penalty cases, race of the victims influenced and increased the likelihood that the defendant would be charged with a capital offense.
As of 2007, about 80% of murder victims in crimes resulting in a death sentence were white, even though nationally only around 50% of murder victims are white.
In 1998, Professor David Daldus, found there was a 38% higher rate for African American defendants to be charged with a capital offense that a white defendant.
A review of the federal death penalty by the Justice Department, released on September 12, 2000, found numerous racial and geographic disparities. The report revealed that 80% of the cases submitted by federal prosecutors for death penalty review in the past five years have involved racial minorities as defendants. In more than half of those cases, the defendant was African-American. The report also found that 40% of the 682 cases sent to the Justice Department for approval to seek the death penalty were filed by only five jurisdictions.
A study of inter-racial murders from 1976 to 2002 by the American Bar Association found that of the 196 death penalty cases, only 12 were white defendants who had been accused of murdering an African American victim, but 175 were African American defendants who were accused of murdering a white victim.
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