New Study Finds Significant Racial Disparities in the Administration of the Death Penalty in Liberal St. Louis County. Death is 3.5 Times More Likely to Be Imposed if the Victim was White
From [HERE] A study of more than 400 death-eligible murder cases in St. Louis County, Missouri over a 27-year period has found significant racial disparities in the county’s administration of the death penalty based upon the race of the victim.
An expert report by University of North Carolina political scientist Frank R. Baumgartner released on September 20, 2022 found that the likelihood that a death sentence would be imposed in St. Louis County was 3.5 times greater if the victim was white, as compared to cases in which the victim was Black. The race-of-victim effects “persist[ed] after the introduction of controls for aggravating and mitigating factors,” Baumgartner wrote, “meaning that these disparities cannot be explained by legitimate case characteristics.”
Baumgartner’s study was prepared in connection with defense efforts to obtain clemency for death-row prisoner Kevin Johnson, a teen offender sentenced to death for killing a white police officer. It covered the years 1991–2018, tracking the period in which former St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Robert P. McCulloch was in office. Voters ousted McCullough in 2018 after he failed to indict a white police officer for the murder of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, which incited the Ferguson protests.
Baumgartner found statistically significant evidence that white lives mattered more to county prosecutors than Black lives during McCullough’s tenure, with the greatest race-of-victim disparities in the treatment of cases occurring at the stages of the case in which prosecutors had the greatest discretion. While more than twice as many of the 408 death-eligible cases that came before county prosecutors during the study period involved Black victims (68.4% to 31.6%), nearly two-thirds of the 29 cases that resulted in death sentences in the county involved victims who were white (62.1% to 37.9%). (Click to enlarge graphic.) On average, 7.1% of death-eligible cases resulted in death sentences. However, death was imposed in 14.1% of white-victim cases, as compared to 4.0% of cases in which the victim was Black.