Legal Scholar Finds that the Death Penalty is “Largely Controlled by a Handful of [White] County Prosecutors” and Whether a Defendant is Put to Death Depends Upon Race and Where He/She Lives

From [HERE] In a 2022 article published in the Idaho Journal of Critical Legal Studies, author Sidney Balman, examines the relationship between racism and geographical arbitrariness in the application of the death penalty in the U.S. As in other areas of society, he finds that Black lives are not valued equally with others. He cites the Supreme Court’s decision in McCleskey v. Kemp (1987) as the main legal obstacle to reversing this bias affecting capital punishment. “Today,” he writes, “McCleskey has come to stand for the Court’s refusal to address the racially disparate imposition of death across the nation.”

When examining the geographical disparities found in the application of the death penalty, the author argues that the bulk of cases is “largely controlled by a handful of county prosecutors,” and that the imbalance is getting worse. He concludes that “the overlap between racism and geography is not just a coincidence.”