Table of Contents
In 1976, the reemergence of capital punishment brought along so many concerns for criminologists and sociologists when they dealt with the reoccurring question of whether or not African Americans are actually being treated fairly within the court system. Some American citizens believe that race is the priority issue and choose to oppose the death penalty due to this reason. Many believe that at least 23 individuals have been found to have been wrongfully executed within the last 10 years (Seligman, 1994) and that number seems to increase. If concluded that race is actually a contributing factor in the decision to execute an offender, it might be hypothesized that African Americans, are in fact most likely to be sentenced to death, happen to oppose the death penalty. However, does religious preference also play a role in the opposition of the death penalty?
Due to the overwhelming number of African Americans on death row I believe the data will reflect a relationship between beliefs for the opposition of the death penalty and race amongst African Americans. It has also been a long concern to whether or not having a religious preference changes an individual’s attitude toward the death penalty. I believe that religion could definitely have some effect on the opposition of the death penalty. If my hypothesis is correct, the data should reflect that those individuals who have a religious preference are more likely to oppose the death sentence.
Source Review
In an article written by Seligman in Fortune magazine, he discussed President Clinton’s proposal to end racial discrimination in capital punishment. Seligman questioned whether or not innocent people get put to death, and later concluded that 23 innocent people have since been put to death in the last century. The author also provided evidence that supports that the race of the victim is the deciding factor of what the sentencing will be. In an article written in Commonweal, the author discusses the opinion of the Catholic church for three issues: abortion, capital punishment, and euthanasia. The church believes that any killing is wrong. However, the author goes on to suggest that although the need for the “state to resort to such measures is very rare, if not practically nonexistent.”
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Before beginning the study, it was believed that race and religion would be good forecasters for determining attitudes concerning the use of the death penalty as a punishment for capital crimes. Based on the review of relevant literature, I hypothesized that: African Americans should be more likely than white Americans to oppose capital punishment, and that Individuals who hold religious values should be more likely to be in opposition to the death penalty.
Methods
The analysis uses data collected by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) in the 1994 General Social Survey (hereafter GSS) The GSS, a nationwide annual survey offers the advantage of multi-stage probability sampling and can be considered representative of English-speaking, non-institutionalized adults (18 years of age and older) living in U.S. households. (Babbie and Halley [1994].) This examination of the correlation between capital punishment, race, and religion relies on a set of 958 of the 2992 original respondents. The data extract includes only questions asked on both interview ballots B and C for Version 2 of the 1994 GSS. This provides the researcher with a continuous array of questions with a decreased number of missing cases; however, the trade-off is the lower number of total cases.
The sample population of this survey consisted of 605 participants who favored the death penalty, while 197 opposed the death sentence in the case of murder. The interview participants were asked, “Do you favor or oppose the death penalty for persons convicted of murder?”.
To determine their religious preference the participants were asked, “What is your religious preference? Is it Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, other, none?” There were 505 Protestants, 159 Catholic, 17 Jewish, 90 with no religious preference, and 29 other.
When interviewed, the race of the participant was selected by the interviewer. However, if the interviewer was unable to determine the race of the participant the question was asked; “What race do you consider yourself to be?” The participant answered with either white, black, or other. White participants accounted for 358 of the sample population, while black participants accounted for 131. The other 39 participants were of another race. This study was performed to determine if there is a correlation between the death penalty, race, and religion.
Conclusion
It was hypothesized that African Americans are more likely to oppose the death penalty. It was found that 614 white Americans favor the death penalty for murder, while 62 of African Americans favor the death penalty. The data collected supports my hypothesis that African Americans are in fact more likely to oppose the death penalty.
The second hypothesis was that individuals with no religious preference would be more likely to be in favor of the death penalty than those with religious values. Among the Protestants interviewed 405 favored the use of the death penalty for murder, while only 102 opposed its use. Of the Catholics in the study 100 were in favor of the death penalty, and 51 opposed. 22 of the Jewish subjects were in favor of the death penalty, while 5 were opposed to it. 61of the sample without a religious preference were in favor of the death penalty, while only 20 were opposed to it. The results of the data do not support my hypothesis.
It was hypothesized that race would be a good factor of beliefs about capital punishment. Of the white Protestants, 4, 350 are in favor of the death penalty, while 55 opposed. 50 of those Black Protestants favored the death penalty, and 46 opposed. White Catholics, 175 are in favor of the death penalty, and 45 oppose it. Among Black Catholics, 7 are in favor of the death penalty, while 3 oppose it. Of the 26 white Jews in the study, 22 are in favor of the death penalty, and 4 opposed it. Of the white sample with no religious preference, 55 were in favor of its use, while 17 were opposed to it.
Discussion and Conclusion
The findings show that there is in fact a correlation between race and beliefs concerning the death penalty. It can be concluded that African Americans are more likely to oppose the death penalty than white Americans. However, more research needs to be done in this area to examine in greater detail the significance between race and capital punishment.
