Table of Contents
While it’s no secret that racial disparity is prevalent throughout the United States’ criminal justice system, discrimination seems to be especially dominant in the sentencing phase of the court process, particularly regarding capital trials. There is much research to suggest discrimination concerning offender/victim race in this aspect of the system. There are several contributors to this problem, including both overt and covert racial prejudices of the courtroom players (jurors, attorneys, and judges), institutional racism, and significant differences in punitive attitudes between racial groups. Conflict theory provides a framework which describes the disparity in the criminal justice system and provides explanations for the racial discrimination that often takes place during the sentencing phase of capital trials.
African Americans and the Criminal Justice System
There is a vast amount of evidence suggesting that the United States’ criminal justice system is racially discriminatory (Kleck, 1981). Although there is a varying degree of disparity amongst whites and several other racial minorities in the criminal justice system, African Americans make up a vastly disproportionate segment. The 1994 Criminal Justice Control Rates recorded that nearly one in every three (30.2%) African American males aged 20-29 were under the supervision of the criminal justice system (probation, jail, prison, parole, etc.) at any given time (Mauer & Huling, 1995).
Racial Discrimination during Sentencing
Although racial discrimination is prominent throughout all aspects of the criminal justice system, it is perhaps the most discriminatory during sentencing (Overby, 1971). According to Kleck (1981), there are five categories which contribute to racial discrimination in criminal sentencing. The first is “overt racial discrimination against minority defendants”, which refers to the implementation of more severe punishments than the offense merits, due to unconscious or conscious racial prejudices (Kleck, 1981).
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The second is “disregard for minority crime victims”, which refers to failure to sentence offenders who harm minority victims as severely as offenders who harm non-minority victims, regardless of the race of the offender (Kleck, 1981). The third is “class discrimination”, which refers to the discrimination of lower-class offenders due to class prejudice (Kleck, 1981). This prejudice disproportionally affects African Americans as opposed to whites as African Americans are overrepresented in the lower class.
The fourth is “economic discrimination”, which refers to the unfair advantage the wealthy have in hiring satisfactory legal representation (Kleck, 1981). This category is intertwined with category four, as they both allude to the overrepresentation of African Americans in the lower class and therefore have a disadvantage in the criminal justice system. The last category is “institutional racism”, referring to the decision-making standards universally accepted yet pose a disadvantage for minorities (Kleck, 1981). For example, using prior conviction records as a factor in deciding sentencing is widely accepted, yet African American defendants are far more likely to have a prior criminal record (Burke & Turk, 1975).
Racial Gap in Punitive Attitudes
Even as the prison population is growing and public spending on criminal justice is increasing significantly, white Americans consistently manifest more punitive attitudes toward offenders than African Americans (Johnson & Secret, 1989). White Americans show widespread approval of harsh criminal justice policies while African Americans show the least majority support of harsh policies (Johnson, 2008). Whites are also consistently more in favor of the death penalty than African Americans (Bobo and Johnson, 2004).
Furthermore, white Americans exhibit favor toward more severe prison sentences and less favor toward rehabilitative goals than African Americans (Gerber & Engelhardt-Greer, 1996). The conflict theory perspective can be applied to this racial gap in punitive attitudes as it reflects Black-White differences of the social structure. Whites, as the ingroup, support harsher punishments as they want to maintain the status quo, while Blacks (the outgroup) are not in favor of harsh punishments due to their belief that the system is biased against them (Johnson, 2008).
African Americans and the Death Penalty
The racial breakdown of death row inmates following Furman is as follows: 46% White, 40% Black, and 16% Hispanic (“Reports Find Record Number of Exonerations in 2016, Blacks More Likely to be Wrongfully Convicted”, n.d.). African Americans experience discrimination during the sentencing phase of capital trials in several ways, including both racial bias toward minority offenders and racial bias toward minority victims.
For example, when a white victim is murdered by an African American, chances of the jury implementing the death penalty rise dramatically (Ekland-Olsen, 1988). Consistent with previous findings, Radelet and Pierce (1991) also found that the offender-victim combination most likely to render a death penalty outcome is a black offender and a white victim, even when other legal variables such as seriousness of the crime are controlled.
Moreover, juries are more likely to implement the death penalty in cases involving white rape victims rather than minority rape victims. (Ekland-Olsen, 1988). Furthermore, African American defendants are more likely than white defendants to be wrongfully convicted and sentenced to the death penalty. One study found that African Americans are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than whites. The number of death row exonerations by race are as follows: 84 black, 62 white, 14 Latino, 3 other (“Innocence and the Death Penalty”, n.d.).
Conflict Theory
Conflict theory stems from the view that society is divided into groups with competing ideas and values (Akers, Sellers, & Jennings, 2017). The group with the most power (the ingroup) holds control over society and makes laws that are beneficial to themselves, while the group without power (the outgroup) must conform to the laws and norms implemented by the ingroup. Social control, which consists of a set of rules regarding how people should behave, is used to control the outgroup from deviating from the ingroup’s standard of normativity (Akers, Sellers, & Jennings, 2017).
Although there are sanctions of informal social control (family, friends, community, etc.), formal sanctions of social control, which include the law and criminal justice system, hold the most authority in controlling the outgroup’s conformity to the law (Akers, Sellers, & Jennings, 2017). Conflict theory also proposes that the law is the product of conflict between ingroup and outgroup interests, and the law endorses the interests of the ingroup as they exercise the economic, social, and political power in society (Akers, Sellers, & Jennings, 2017).
Although conflict theory serves to explain criminal behavior, it also serves to explain the construction of the law and criminal justice system. Akers, Sellers, and Jennings (2017) claim that the design of the law both directly and indirectly serves the interests of the ingroup. Therefore, the outgroups of society, such as those of low socioeconomic status, racial minorities, women, and youth will be at a disadvantage in dealing with the criminal justice system.
Case Study: Walter McMillian
Walter McMillian was an African American man from Monroeville, Alabama (coincidentally, the birthplace of To Kill a Mockingbird author, Harper Lee) wrongfully convicted of the murder of a white woman and sentenced to death. McMillian’s conviction was the result of racial discrimination in several aspects. Many speculate that McMillian was targeted as a suspect of the murder because of his interracial affair with a white woman, as the community greatly disapproved of interracial relationships at the time. McMillian claimed in a prison interview, “The only reason I’m here is because I had been messing around with a white lady and my son married a white lady” (Applebome, 1993).
McMillian was still arrested and convicted even though he had an alibi: at the time of the murder, he was at a church fish fry with dozens of witnesses. However, Sherriff Tom Tate was under great pressure to arrest a suspect, and therefore brushed aside McMillian’s alibi, despite the insistence of several witnesses (one being a police officer) that McMillian was innocent. Tate was even quoted as saying to McMillian, “I don’t give a damn what you say or what you do. I don’t give a damn what your people say either. I’m going to put twelve people on a jury who are going to find your goddamn black ass guilty” (Earley, 1995).
The U.S. Supreme Court case Batson v. Kentucky (1986) ruled that jurors cannot be dismissed solely on the grounds of race. However, in McMillian’s trial, there were several instances by the prosecution and trial judge of juror racial discrimination. McMillian’s trial was granted a change of venue due to the vast amount of pretrial media coverage.
However, the defense remained hopeful- nearly all other neighboring counties had a predominantly African American population, which greatly increased the chances for a representative jury rather than the usual all-white juries in capital cases in Alabama. However, Judge Robert E. Lee Key chose to relocate the trial to Baldwin County, the atypical county with only a 9 percent African American population. The prosecution unconstitutionally dismissed many African American jurors, leaving a nearly all-white jury for McMillian’s trial.
Further evidence of racial discrimination against McMillian existed throughout his trial. A nearly all-white jury convicted McMillian on circumstantial evidence alone during a shockingly short trial, lasting only a day and a half. Furthermore, the jury ignored the testimonies of several witnesses in McMillian’s defense, all of whom where African American. Although the jury recommended life without parole, judge Key exercised the controversial power of judicial override (now considered unconstitutional) and imposed the death penalty instead.
Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, took on McMillian’s case post-conviction. Stevenson was able to have McMillian’s conviction overturned on the grounds of false testimony and the prosecution suppressing exculpatory evidence, thereby exonerating McMillian (Stevenson, 2015). After spending six years on death row for a crime he did not commit, Walter McMillian walked out of Holman prison as a free man in 1993. Stevenson documented his experience fighting for McMillian’s exoneration in his best-selling book, Just Mercy (2015), where he speaks out against cases of injustice not only for McMillian but for other criminal trials involving unfair treatment of racial minorities and juvenile delinquents.
Conflict Theory Applied
The primary features of conflict theory outline Walter McMillian’s case in several ways. McMillian’s arrest fueled by community disapproval of an interracial relationship reflects the ingroup’s (white members of the community) power over the outgroup (African American members of the community). McMillian, a member of the outgroup, displayed deviant behavior in the eyes of the ingroup by engaging in a relationship with a white woman.
Therefore, the ingroup exercised their power of social control over McMillian and punished him for deviating from the societal norm. Social control relies largely on socialization, the process of learning values and norms through example and the application of social sanctions (Akers, Sellers, & Jennings, 2017). McMillian’s arrest therefore served as a socialization process to teach other members of the outgroup in the community to either conform to the societal norms set in place by the ingroup or be punished.
Sherriff Tate represented a facet of formal social control over McMillian. As both a white male and a member of law enforcement, Tate wielded double the ingroup power over McMillian, who had double the disadvantages of the outgroup being both impoverished and a racial minority. Tate exercised his ingroup power by arresting McMillian despite his having a solid alibi. McMillian’s witnesses, also members of the outgroup, could not convince the ingroup of his innocence as their words held less weight than members of the ingroup.
Judge Key also represented a component of formal social control, as he once again, a white male, exercised nearly absolute control over McMillian’s fate. Key exercised his ingroup influence first by relocating the trial to a disproportionately white-populated county, and second by exercising judicial override and implementing the death penalty. Furthermore, the white jurors exercised their power as ingroup members by rendering a guilty verdict despite multiple defense witnesses, further reinforcing the idea of the ingroup holding social control over the outgroup.
While there are several factors that account for racial disparity in the criminal justice system, the concepts surrounding conflict theory build the framework for which the ingroup (whites) hold control over the outgroup (racial minorities), especially in matters of the law. Overt racist ideals, subconscious prejudices, institutional policies, and differences in racial punitive attitudes all contribute to the disproportionate representation of African Americans on death row. Organizations such as the Equal Justice Initiative fight to end this racial disparity by speaking out against racial and socioeconomic injustices in the criminal justice system and advocating for the marginalized members of society.
References
- Akers, R. L., Sellers, C. S., & Jennings, W. G. (2017). Criminological theories: Introduction, evaluation, and application (7th ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.
- Applebome, P. (1993, March 3). Alabama Releases Man Held On Death Row for Six Years. The New York Times. Retrieved December 14, 2018, from https://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/03/us/alabama-releases-man-held-on-death-row-for-six-years.html
- Bobo, L.D., Johnson, D. (2004). A taste for punishment: Black and White Americans’ views on the death penalty and the war on drugs. Du Bois Review: Social Science Research on Race, 1. 151-180.
- Burke, P., Turk, A. (1975). Factors affecting postarrest dispositions: a model for analysis. Social Problems, 22. 313-332
- Earley, P. (1995). Circumstantial Evidence: Death, Life, and Justice in a Southern Town. Bantam.
- Ekland-Olsen, S. (1988). Structured discretion, racial bias, and the death penalty: The first decade after Furman in Texas. Social Science Quarterly, 69(4). 853-873.
- Gerber J., Engelhardt-Greer S. (1996). Just and painful: Attitudes toward sentencing criminals T. Flanagan, D. Longmire (Eds.), Americans view crime and justice: A national opinion survey., Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA (1996).
- Innocence and the Death Penalty. (n.d.). Retrieved October 10, 2018, from https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-and-death-penalty#race
- Johnson, D. (2008). Racial prejudice, perceived injustice, and the Black-White gap in punitive attitudes. Journal of Criminal Justice, 36, 198–206.
- Johnson, J.S., Secret, P.E. (1989). Racial differences in attitudes toward crime control. Journal of Criminal Justice, 17. 361-375
- Kleck, G. (1981, December). Racial Discrimination in Criminal Sentencing: A Critical Evaluation of the Evidence with Additional Evidence on the Death Penalty. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2095079.pdf
- Radelet, M., Pierce, G. (1991). Choosing who will die: Race and the death penalty in Florida. Florida Law Review, 43, 1-43.
- Reports Find Record Number of Exonerations in 2016, Blacks More Likely to be Wrongfully Convicted. (n.d.). Retrieved October 10, 2018, from https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/node/6698
- Mauer, M., Huling, T. (1995, October). Young Black Americans and the Criminal Justice System: Five Years Later. Retrieved from https://www.sentencingproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Young-Black-Americans-and-the-Criminal-Justice-System-Five-Years-Later.pdf
- Overby, A. (1971). Discrimination against minority groups. Crime and Justice, 2. 569-581.
- Stevenson, B. (2015). Just mercy: A story of justice and redemption. New York: Spiegel & Grau.
