GREENSBORO — The future of capital punishment in North Carolina could hinge on a question most people find odious: Does the court system think a white person’s life is worth more than a black person’s?

A recent study of Tar Heel courts — led by prominent death-penalty researcher Michael Radelet — suggests the answer is “yes.” Radelet found the odds a murder suspect will get the death penalty are three times higher if the victim is white rather than black.

That kind of disparity could call death sentences into question by indicating prosecutors and juries improperly value the lives of white people more highly than those of African American descent.

“Those who kill whites are more likely to be sentenced to death. It’s as factual as the sun is shining somewhere on earth right now,” said Radelet, a sociology professor at the University of Colorado. “Nobody is arguing intentional racism by prosecutors. There could be, but we don’t know that. Instead, what is probably going on is more unconscious bias.”

Supporters of the death penalty say Radelet’s study is off base. Among other things, they argue that while the raw numbers may be accurate, the disparities are less gaping than they appear at first blush and can be explained by sociological factors that have nothing to do with racial prejudice.

Radelet’s study, which examined 15,281 murders from 1980 to 2008, is one of several in recent years to make similar findings about North Carolina’s use of the death penalty. But his study comes at a crucial crossroads, when at least 148 of the 159 convicts on North Carolina’s death row are appealing their sentences, citing alleged racial bias.

Four cases have Guilford County ties: African Americans Walic Thomas,James D. King and John H. Thompson and white serial killer Lesley E. Warren. They are appealing under North Carolina’s new Racial Justice Act, which allows a judge to consider statistical evidence of racial bias in reviewing a death sentence.

Flaws in the studies?

Not all the death-row litigants claim their victim’s race played an improper role in their sentence. Among the racial-justice appeals so far, many cite the alleged systemic exclusion of black people from juries in murder trials.

Critics say Radelet’s study and others like it have flaws. For example, Radelet did not consider how often recipients of North Carolina’s death penalty had been convicted of past crimes or the severity of those crimes, said state Sen. Phil Berger of Eden. In fact, the study included only two of 11 “aggravating” factors that juries may consider in deciding between life or death, Berger said.

Most death penalty researchers have an agenda aimed at eliminating capital punishment and their studies are shaped by that prejudice, said Berger, who represents parts of Guilford and Rockingham counties.

“I’m not sure that what they say they’re measuring is even capable of being measured,” said Berger, a death penalty supporter involved in efforts to revive its use.

North Carolina hasn’t carried out an execution since 2006. In addition to alleged racial bias, capital punishment has been sidelined by disputes over the role that doctors play in supervising the taking of a life, whether lethal injection is humane and other issues.

Another skeptic says anti-death penalty research consistently delivers findings that look more dramatic than they really are because the average person doesn’t understand statistics. Juries impose capital punishment in such a small subset of all murders that a threefold jump in the odds a white victim’s murder triggers a death sentence is almost meaningless, said Dudley Sharp, a capital-punishment proponent from Texas and frequent critic of such statistical analyses.

The disparity could be explained by such factors as white people being more frequent targets of the crimes likeliest to trigger a death sentence if they also end in murder, such as carjacking, Sharp said.

Influence of 'Old South’

Radelet acknowledges that his study was not sufficiently in-depth to pinpoint what’s behind the racial imbalance, adding that more detailed research should be done to clear up such lingering questions.

But North Carolina death-penalty researcher Isaac Unah says that so many studies reached similar findings about the state, it’s hard to believe nothing is awry.

“I think these studies lead us in a direction of saying we have a Constitution that allows the death penalty, but the Constitution does not permit the way in which capital punishment is being administered,” said Unah, a political science professor at UNC-Chapel Hill.

He also was chief investigator for an earlier study of North Carolina death penalty cases with results very close to what Radelet found.

Unah’s study in 2001 looked at only five years of murder cases — from 1993 through 1997 — but it did consider whether the killer had a past history of violent crime and other factors a jury is allowed to weigh in deciding life or death for convicted killers. It found the odds of a death sentence during the study period were 3.5 times higher across North Carolina in cases with a white victim.

Groups opposing the death penalty say the studies simply confirm what they have observed over the years.

“We’re in the Old South here in North Carolina, and we are not done with the legacy of lynchings and Jim Crow and all that ugly history,” said Stephen Dear, executive director of the Carrboro-based group, People of Faith Against the Death Penalty.

But Tom Bennett, executive director of the N.C. Victim Assistance Network in Raleigh, said “studies and averages” are irrelevant to surviving family members of murder victims.

Executing the killer never makes up for their loss, Bennett said. “But it can give them some sense society has shown respect and put some value on the life of their loved one.”

Contact Taft Wireback at 373-7100 or taft.wireback@news-record.com
 
http://www.news-record.com/content/2010/08/14/article/study_ties_race_to_death_penalty