African-Americans account for 40 percent of the people who have been executed this year by state governments, though they represent only about 12 percent of the total U.S. population, according to a BlackAmericaWeb.com analysis.
The death of Troy Davis, the Georgia man who was executed by lethal injection late Wednesday following three stays of execution, marked the 14th time this year a black man has been put to death in America by a state government. In that same time, 19 whites have been executed, including Lawrence Brewer, who died earlier Wednesday for dragging a black man, James Byrd Jr., to his death in 1998.
Death penalty advocates say there is a definite disparity in the proportion of blacks and Hispanics executed in America. When you combine the total executions so far this year for black and brown people, they account for 45 percent, according to corrections data.
“Blacks and Latinos overall have a much higher rate of convictions for murder,” said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Washington D.C.-based Sentencing Project, a national organization working to improve the criminal justice system by promoting reforms in sentencing law and practice and alternatives to incarceration.
“Studies show that in cases where the victim is white, the race of the victim becomes a variable in determining who gets life and who gets a death sentence,” Mauer told BlackAmericaWeb.com.
The disparity presents a sad message about the nation’s system of justice, he said.
“It’s as if to say a white life is more valuable than a black life,” said Mauer.
Davis was convicted for the 1989 death of off-duty Savannah, Georgia police officer Mark McPhail. He has maintained his innocence, and nine of the seven witnesses who initially testified against him have recanted their stories.
Mauer said the large number of people exonerated since 1989 when DNA analysis was used to help bring about justice shows that there are flaws in the system.
“I wonder how many more people are sitting in prisons or awaiting execution who should not be there,” he said.
According to the New York-based Innocence Project, which works to free convicts who are unjustly imprisoned, there have been 273 post-conviction exonerations from death sentences or life without parole.
In the state of Texas alone, 12 people have been exonerated from death row. Gov. Rick Perry has authorized 234 executions during his tenure. The state has the second highest death row population, surpassed only by California.
A closer look at the numbers show deep disparity in death row demographics.
In Louisiana, for example, a state where only 31 percent of the residents are black, blacks account for 65 percent of the death row population.
And in Georgia, the place where Troy Davis was killed on Wednesday, blacks make up 30 percent of the state population and 67 percent of the population on death row.
“I don’t know whether Troy Davis committed the crime or not. But too often racial dynamics come into play,” Mauer said. “They try to send the message of being tough on crime.”
