During the first post, I
suggested that the death penalty was racially biased and to dig deeper, I need
to explain why. Racial disparity in the death penalty is shown throughout
history; with the Supreme Court help, those who violated the constitutional
rights of victims can get away with the crime if the criminal is white or if
the victim was white. Looking at the graph below, one can see that white
victims (more than 75%) are seen as more important to the Supreme Court (the
court who justifies if one deserves the death penalty) than any other race. The
Court considers to take cases with white victims.
In the article, How the
Supreme Court Protects Bad Cop, the article tells several events when the Court
favours the cops by constantly denying that the black victims’ rights were
violated. In the end, by the Court favouring cops and white victims this has
created a racial disparity in the death penalty because those who are put on
the death penalty are mainly men of colour. Along with police immunity by the
Court, the attorneys are also held a huge amount of power. It was shown in a recent
studied, as stated in The Colour of Justice, when attorneys “approved for the
death penalty prosecution, 72 percent involved minority defendants” (5). Without
directly stating racism, the Court found a way to indirectly keep racial
disparity even when it comes to the death penalty by giving the police immunity
and attorneys a great deal of power by denying the violation by the police and
attorneys.
With this in mind, we now go to the death of Michael Brown. The topic that’s been in the news for months, and
continues, is the indirect racism underlying Michael Brown’s death. When the Missouri
cop, Wilson, killed Brown, people demanded justice. Just from this simple action by the people
took shows that inequality is present when it comes to the death penalty. Wilson should have immediately been sentenced to jail if not the
death penalty because Brown’s rights were taken away from him. However, as of
today, the cop still did not go on trial to see if he had the rights to kill a
young man instead of finding an alternative way of dealing with the situation.
Since Wilson is a cop and is white, the chances of him going on the death penalty
let alone serving any jail time is very slim thus the reasoning for the uproars and/or protests of demanding justice which the picture below shows.
Just as in Ferguson, there
is a higher chance for justice if a white man was a victim than if a black man
was a victim. In the article, How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops, Chemerinsky details several events when a/some white cop(s) killed a black male
without much of a punishment. One of these cases were the Plumhoff vs. Rickard
when a high speed chase started and a police officer believed shooting the car
would be the best method thus killing the driver and the passenger. The Supreme
Court ruled that the police had a valid reason for shooting the car and if
necessary policemen can shoot cars during chases until the car stops. Rather
than shooting the tire(s) the police immediately jumped to this idea. However,
instead of getting the death penalty because the two victims were stripped of
the constitutional rights in many ways, he and other cops actually gets encouraged to shoot cars during chases and to continue shooting until the chase is over.
Learning about the immunity of
cops and the attorneys' power from the Supreme Court and in the New Jim Crow,
and in the article, “How the Supreme Court…” I see that the outcome of the
Ferguson trial when started will be disappointing for most because there is a
higher chance for the Supreme Court to deny the violation. Racial disparity is
only growing when it comes to the death penalty because blacks mainly men are
having their rights taken away from them when they are victims in a murder by
the Supreme Court when the Court denies the violation of the criminal if white
and excuse him from death row.
Bibliography
"Racial Disparities." Death Sentence Focus. Webite. Assessed October 20 2014. http://www.deathpenalty.org/article.php?id=54
Chemerinsky, Erwin. "How the Supreme Court Protects Bad Cops." New York Times. 2014. Website. Assessed October 20, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/opinion/how-the-supreme-court-protects-bad-cops.html?module=Search&mabReward=relbias%3Ar%2C%7B%222%22%3A%22RI%3A18%22%7D
"Colour of Justice." Constitutional Rights Foundation. 2014. Website. Assessed October 20 2014. http://www.crf-usa.org/brown-v-board-50th-anniversary/the-color-of-justice.html
"Tension in Ferguson." Vox. 2014. Website. Assessed October 20 2014. http://www.vox.com/2014/8/11/5993609/michael-brown-ferguson-shooting-protests-riots-police-violence-unarmed
The courts protection of police and attorneys reminds me of the federal protection of racism that was presented in The New Jim Crow. I find it interesting that in aspects of the law as small as a traffic violation to as large as the death penalty, racism rears its head. You’re analysis of the Michael Brown case goes along with the protection by the federal court of whites, and the allowed discrimination of the blacks. To complicate matters, I just ponder what the outcome would have been if it were a black cop who was being accused of the unjust killing of a white teenage boy. Would the federal court still protect its law agency, or would race overshadow the corrupt cops badge? This could be a very interesting study, and in my assumption I think race would be more of a factor than position in the workforce, as society still puts more emphasis on the color of one’s skin than any other aspect of life.
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