Death Sentencing in the United States

Baldus Study in relation to Crime and Race

Baldus Study is included in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime (1), beginning with: The Baldus study, designed and conducted by David C. Baldus, George C. Woodworth, and Charles A. Pulaski, Jr., is a study of “equal justice” in death sentencing during a period of judicial conflict and controversy over capital punishment. This landmark study focused on levels of arbitrariness and racial discrimination in capital sentencing in Georgia during the period 1969–1979. Three principal reasons led the authors of the study to concentrate on the state of Georgia. First, Georgia led the nation from 1930 to 1980 in the total number of offenders executed. Second, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in both Furman v. Georgia (1972), which invalidated all capital sentencing statutes, and Gregg v. Georgia (1976), which upheld the constitutionality of the death penalty for murder, focused on Georgia’s capital sentencing system. Third, the study was designed to challenge Georgia’s post-Furman capital sentencing system on issues of arbitrariness and racial discrimination.

Capital Punishment

Note: a complete entry about capital punishment is available here.

Is capital punishment –punishment by death– cruel and unusual and therefore unconstitutional? 16 For years, the Supreme Court was reluctant to face that highly charged issue. The Court did hold that neither death by firing squad (Wilkerson v. Utah, 1878) nor by a second electrocution (Louisiana v. Resweber, 1947) is unconstitutional.

The Court met the issue more or less directly in Furman v. Georgia, 1972. There it struck down all of the then existing State laws allowing the death penalty, but not because that penalty as such was cruel and unusual. Rather, the Court voided those laws because they gave too much discretion to judges or juries in deciding whether to impose the death penalty. The Court noted that out of all the people convicted of capital crimes, only “a random few,” most of them African American or poor or both, were “capriciously selected” for execution.
Since that decision, Congress and 38 States have passed new capital punishment laws. At first, those laws took one of two forms. Several States made the death penalty mandatory for certain crimes, such as killing a police officer or murder committed during a rape, kidnapping, or arson. Other States provided for a two-stage process in capital cases: first, a trial to settle the issue of guilt or innocence; then, for those convicted, a second hearing to decide whether the circumstances justify a sentence of death.

In considering the scores of challenges to those State laws, the Supreme Court found the mandatory death penalty laws unconstitutional. In Woodson v. North Carolina, 1976, it ruled that such laws were “unduly harsh and rigidly unworkable.” It saw the laws as attempts simply to “paper over” the decision in Furman.

The two-stage approach to capital punishment is constitutional, however. In Gregg v. Georgia, 1976, the Court held, for the first time, that the “punishment of death does not invariably violate the Constitution.” It ruled that well-drawn two-stage laws can practically eliminate “the risk that [the death penalty] will be inflicted in an arbitrary or capricious manner.”

The death penalty can be imposed only for “crimes resulting in the death of the victim,” Coker v. Georgia, 1977. That penalty cannot be imposed on those who are mentally challenged, Atkins v. Virginia, 2002, or on those who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed, Roper v. Simmons, 2005.

The question of whether the death penalty is to be imposed in a case must be decided by the jury that convicted the defendant, not the judge who presided at the trial, Ring v. Arizona, 2002. A convicted defendant cannot be forced to appear in court in shackles and chains when the jury is deciding whether he or she should be sentenced to die or, instead, to life in prison, Deck v. Missouri, 2005.

Opponents of capital punishment continue to appeal cases to the Court, but to no real avail. The sum of the Court’s many decisions over the past 30 years is this: The death penalty, fairly applied, is constitutional.
A sizable majority of the American people support capital punishment. Still, many who favor it have misgivings about the fairness with which death sentences are applied.

Governor George Ryan of Illinois ignited controversy when he ordered a suspension of executions in his State in 2000. He did so, he said, because the death penalty process is “fraught with error.” From 1977 to 2000, 285 people were sentenced to die in Illinois. By 2000, 12 of them had been executed, but 13 others had been released from prison because they had been wrongly convicted.

In 2003, Governor Ryan commuted the sentences of all the inmates then on death row in Illinois. He justified that extraordinary action by citing a State investigation that uncovered corruption and racial bias in the State’s death penalty process. The legislature has since passed several reform measures, but current governor Rod Blagojevich has refused to lift the suspension. He says the State’s problems continue.

The death penalty statutes in New York and Kansas were held unconstitutional by those States’ highest courts in 2004. Efforts to revive those laws continue.

Resources

Notes and References

1. Entry about Baldus Study in the Encyclopedia of Race and Crime

See Also