Anne Blythe, News & Observer (Raleigh), March 18, 2009
A couple of defense lawyers are using a local death penalty study that mirrors the racial disparities highlighted in national analyses to try and keep their client from being prosecuted capitally.
An analysis of 177 murder cases over five years shows that prosecutors are six times more likely in Durham, one of the most diverse counties in the state, to seek capital punishment when a black suspect has been accused of killing a white person compared with when the victim is black.
Jay Ferguson and Lisa Williams, two Durham lawyers, plan to use the analysis in their defense of Keith Kidwell, a 24-year-old black man who has spent the past four years in jail awaiting trial on charges that he murdered Crayton Nelms, a white Kangaroo convenience store clerk found beaten to death at work in February 2005.
Ferguson and Williams will argue in court this week that the death penalty should be taken off the table because of the racial disparity issue. They also say their client has been denied his right to a speedy trial and the whole case should be dismissed.
The Durham analysis was conducted by Isaac Unah, a political scientist at UNC-Chapel Hill.
The researcher looked at all murder cases indicted by the Durham grand jury and followed them from start to finish.
Of the 177 murder suspects indicted by a Durham County grand jury between 2003 and 2007, 50 could not be prosecuted as death penalty cases because the defendants were too young.
Of the 127 other cases, only 20 were ever capital cases. None of those went to jury as a death penalty case because prosecutors often use the threat of capital punishment in bargaining for pleas.
{snip}
Although the 20-case sample is small, Kidwell’s attorneys say the larger picture is the more troubling trend they plan to broach with a judge.
{snip}
The researchers considered more than race. They also analyzed the cases by the number of victims and the number of charges the suspects faced.
“Of all the factors analyzed,” Unah concluded in the affidavit attached to his study, “the race of the victim had the greatest effect on the decision to seek the death penalty.”
Of the 107 cases where the suspect was black and the victim was black, prosecutors sought the death penalty nearly 10 percent of the time. Of the 20 cases where the suspects were black and the victims white, prosecutors sought the death penalty 35 percent of the time.
The findings come at a time when a Racial Justice Act proposal is back before state legislators. The act would give defendants in capital murder cases the right to challenge their prosecution on racial bias grounds.
{snip}
Other factors to consider, said Coleman, the Duke law professor, are whether the victim and suspect were strangers, which often brings threats of harsher punishment.
In gang-related cases, Coleman added, prosecutors often do not seek the death penalty because the victims might have provoked the crime.
{snip}
Original article
Email
Anne Blythe
at anne.blythe@newsobserver.com .
(Posted on March 18, 2009)
Comments
I can remember many years ago when the Death Penalty in California and many other states was thrown out by the Supreme court.I was not keeping close count, but the murder rate doubled overnight,and I do not exaggerate. It stayed that way for most of a year, until it was once again reinstated.Immediately the murder rate fell back to a rate close to what it was before.And a large number were black on white hate crimes, but the politically correct newspapers and television gave no hint of it.
“An analysis of 177 murder cases over five years shows that prosecutors are six times more likely in Durham, one of the most diverse counties in the state, to seek capital punishment when a black suspect has been accused of killing a white person compared with when the victim is black.”
And
“Of the 107 cases where the suspect was black and the victim was black, prosecutors sought the death penalty nearly 10 percent of the time. Of the 20 cases where the suspects were black and the victims white, prosecutors sought the death penalty 35 percent of the time.”
Well what all that says to me is that at least 35% of the time in the cases of black on white murders the cases are about a completely innocent white victim brutally murdered by premeditation or while a habitual felon perp was committing another felony; and in the case of black on black murder, 90% of the time, the death of the “victim” really didn’t represent all that great of a loss to society, as the “victim’s” priors were just as bad if not worse than those of his murderer.
Bear in mind folks, we are also talking about a county in which the elected DA has to garner a substantial percentage of Durham County’s 44% black electorate in order to hold office. Ask Mike Nifong if you don’t believe me.
Don’t forget, the only kind of murder that the death penalty applies to is first degree murder. There is second degree murder, and some states have third degree murder. Of those 127 cases, how many of those were charged with first degree murder?
Also, black on white murders tend to be more brutal than black on black, the former sometimes being hate crimes, the latter being elevated disputes over money/women/drug distribution territory/things/being dissed.
In order to make this so-called “study” strictly fair, wouldn’t there also have to have been some cases analyzed where the perpetrator was White and the victim black? Why were none of those included? Perhaps there WERE no such cases that could be considered. And if so, what does that tell about the propensity of blacks for killing Whites?
And isn’t a sample of only 20 cases small to the point of absurdity when it comes to trying to draw conclusions from it? What were the aggravating circumstances among those 20 cases? I covered a number of murder trials as a reporter, and every one is different in terms of aggravators, mitigators, motives, etc. The mere fact that in 20 cases out of 127, the death penalty was sought 35 percent of the time instead of 10 percent, proves absolutely nothing.
And by the way, why has this defendant been in jail for four years awaiting trial? Delays like that in this day and age usually result from a series of motions for continuances on the part of the defense, which wants to pile up as much “good time” for its client as possible before a trial in which he is likely to be found guilty.
If they are really looking for ‘racial disparities’ they might want to look into the fact a black person is 108 times more likely to rob a white person, 34 times more likely to assault a white person, 15 times more likely to murder a white person than the reverse, and that black men are around 600 times more likely to rape a white woman; and yet blacks are only 2 1/2 times more likely to be charged with an officially designated hate crime (and how many of those charges were actually do to ‘hate crimes’ against Hispanics, Asians or gays?).
This only tells me, if this is fact, that blacks shouldn’t target Whites for their crimes if they want this problem to go away. Wouldn’t bother me one bit to see them leave Whites alone so they could get “fair” justice.
Anonymous:
In your last sentence, didn’t you mean “2 and 1/2 times LESS likely” to be charged with a hate crime?
That would be more accurate in that blacks can basically have a violent field day on a white person while calling them every racial slur in their limited vocabulary. Rarely are they prosecuted for it.
“…six times more likely in Durham, one of the most diverse counties in the state…”
Could there be a linear correlation between high levels of diversity (large proportions of minorities) and high murder rates? More minorities, more crime and violence, more likelihood of murder and convictions?
“…seek capital punishment when a black suspect has been accused of killing a white person compared with when the victim is black.”
One obvious solution would be to prosecute blacks who kill blacks just as harshly. Equality of standards and outcome.
An analysis of 177 murder cases over five years shows that prosecutors are six times more likely in Durham, one of the most diverse counties in the state, to seek capital punishment when a black suspect has been accused of killing a white person compared with when the victim is black
As far as I know, the disparity is between interracial murderers and intraracial murderers, not between black murderers of blacks and black murderers of whites.
“Disparity in death-penalty prosecutions can be due only to “racism.”
If blacks had any sense at all, they would be glad to see a murderer get what is coming to him, instead of a so-called “life” sentence where he could be out in their neighborhoods again killing more. It has occurred so many times any person with normal intelligence would want to eliminate the perp. Any group but blacks wouldn’t want these kinds of people to survive.
The justice system is simply using a cost benefit analysis in arriving at these verdicts. Simple really.
“Of all the factors analyzed,” Unah concluded in the affidavit attached to his study, “the race of the victim had the greatest effect on the decision to seek the death penalty.”
Considering the fact that most whites are murdered by other whites and most blacks are murdered by other blacks, this actually means that white murderers are MORE likely to get the death penalty than black murderers. This is their little trick in using the “people who murder whites are more likely to get the death penalty” argument.
Aren’t all crimes where the victim is a different race than the perpetrator at least considered to be hate crimes?
Aren’t hate crimes more serious, and therefore require harsher penalties, than other crimes?
There we go. Case closed.
Not because they are Black, but because they are poor and can’t afford slick lawyers who find ways to set the guilty free.
“blacks can basically have a violent field day on a white person while calling them every racial slur in their limited vocabulary. Rarely are they prosecuted for it.”
Notice when people, black and white, use the term ‘redneck’ a racial slur, it’s considered a way to show everyone how enlightened they are.
That is 100 percent true; Whites are killed because of their race both as innocent,law-abiding, tax paying, creative Original-Americans and also have higher rates guilty murders on ” death row “; of course the killing rate of White law-abiding citizens is off the charts when executed by non-whites because of their racist, jealous bigotry against Caucasians but this type of ” hate crime ” is swept under the Marxist, globalistic government and Marxist anti-White Christian media rug.
Great Posts! However, no one seemed to mention that the political scientist who issued this report is black. The analysis is also very superficial. Obviously the background of the person on trial and the nature of the killings are very relevant to the decision to go for the death penalty. Professorf Unah seems to treat all murders the same. Would it not be outrageous to include the killers in the Knoxville Horror and the Wichita Massacre? Also, the speedy trial issue is probably a red herring. Courts routinely take time waivers and usually at the requests of the defense attorneys.
“Not because they are Black, but because they are poor and can’t afford slick lawyers who find ways to set the guilty free.’
Most whites facing the death penalty are usually poor or can’t afford a slick lawyer.
The reason black on white murderers are more likely to face the death penalty is that these black on white crimes are typically more heinous: like rape and murder or armed robbery & murder. Blacks often kill other black neighbors or blacks they know but are angry about drugs, women, etc. This is well known to criminologists and black lawyers who are forever trying to fool people with this lame ratio argument. For a discussion of this see, for example, the book
America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible by Stephan Thernstrom and Abigail Thernstrom
With a sample of 20 cases, how long would it take to just call up the prosecutors and ask why they brought the charges they did? Were the authors afraid that if they did so, they might get an answer that did not conform with the one they had predetermined?
And how many of the prosecutors of these cases were black? Looking at the Durham DA’s office website, I found the following names on staff:
Fungai Muzorewa-Bennett
A bunch of bigoted WASPs from the suburbs, no doubt!!
“Ferguson and Williams will argue in court this week that the death penalty should be taken off the table because of the racial disparity issue.”
This commitment to “racial balance” on Death Row also comes up in the movie “Dead Man Walking,” where the scheduled-to-fry white con (Sean Penn) explains that the state NEEDS to apply the death penalty to him because their last several executions have been of blacks. Although this movie was drama and not documentary, I believe it is accurate that the liberal legalistas involved in death-penalty cases really do think and act like that: that race-based quotas get factored into the decision-making process for who on Death Row ends up being administered the lethal injection versus whose life ends up getting spared.
Of the 177 murder suspects indicted by a Durham County grand jury between 2003 and 2007, 50 could not be prosecuted as death penalty cases because the defendants were too young…Of the 127 other cases, only 20 were ever capital cases…
Numbers don’t add up at all. “nearly 10 percent” of 107 should mean 10. 35 percent of 20 is 7, which adds to 17, not 20.
Furthermore, as reported, all 127 adult murderers in Durham from 2003 to 2007 were black. Whatever the racial disparity is, it’s not that extreme.
I wonder if the researchers messed up the figures, or the reporter did? Guessing the reporter - the researchers are probably sophisticated enough to know they’re leaving out relevant factors such as stranger murders, domestic or acquaintance murders, criminal activity of victims, aggravating factors such as rape and robbery.
These stats are further misleading because the Durham DA’s office pleas all sorts of potential First Degree Murder cases to Second Degree Murder due to the unreliability of witnesses and the lack of fighting spirit in the DA’s office.
Of course, Mike Nifong had some fighting spirit, so maybe that is not what we really want…
Durham is a pretty worthless place, in my opinion.
As a European I’m opposed to the death penalty, which is both barbaric and ineffective.
That said, it’s clear why there’s a “racial disparity” here: non-whites commit MORE murders. Simple as.
Perhaps this disparity is because black-on-black murders are frequently a case of N’Deshawntavious Jackson, a Crip, killing Rashid Washington, a Blood, while black-on-white murders are frequently cases like the totally unprovoked and inhumanly vicious murders of Eve Carson, Missy McLauchlin, Channon Christian and Christopher Newsome.
Gang members killing each other does not provoke the sort of outrage among either the voting public or elected district attorneys that torture/gang-rape/murders of completely innocent citizens do.
I have heard that in the universe of people convicted by a jury of first degree murder (those who plead guilty are doing so to avoid execution, so the only way that one could be executed is by going to a jury trial and being found guilty), whites are more likely than blacks to receive the death penalty, and more likely to be executed.
And I think that the disproportionality is larger moving from receiving the penalty and actually being executed, because I’m sure blacks on death row are more likely to have their execution delayed over and over again because some judges are more likely to agree with the liberal myths. See: Mumia.
I agree with this article that the system should be fair. But if it were fair, many more black Murder 1st convicts would be prescribed execution and actually be executed.
If the attorneys are successful in getting him acquitted, then they should invite him to live with them in their home. Wonder if they are so convinced of his innocence, that they would agree to this? Has anyone ever tried to reason with a very angry black man? It just cannot be done! You can no more reason with him than you can with a wild reptile. Those unfortunate to be caught in black “hoods” with stalled autos, no doubt plead for their lives, but it is the same as a young antelope pleading with a crocodile to allow it to go free while in it’s jaws! These attorneys with bleeding hearts for murderous blacks are a blight on justice.
