A Test of Racial Bias in Capital Sentencing
Alberto Alesina & Eliana La Ferrara
NBER Working Paper, April 2011
Abstract: This paper proposes a test of racial bias in capital sentencing based upon patterns of judicial errors in lower courts. We model the behavior of the trial court as minimizing a weighted sum of the probability of sentencing an innocent and that of letting a guilty defendant free. We define racial bias as a situation where the relative weight on the two types of errors is a function of defendant and/or victim race. The key prediction of the model is that if the court is unbiased, ex post the error rate should be independent of the combination of defendant and victim race. We test this prediction using an original dataset that contains the race of the defendant and of the victim(s) for all capital appeals that became final between 1973 and 1995. We find robust evidence of bias against minority defendants who killed white victims: In Direct Appeal and Habeas Corpus the probability of error in these cases is 3 and 9 percentage points higher, respectively, than for minority defendants who killed minority victims.
My own view: Capital Punishment should be abolished immediately
1. It's barbaric (I won't insult you with a link. It's obvious that the state should not have the power to murder a helpless unarmed person entirely in its power. If you come to my house and break in, I will shoot you, multiple times, with a large caliber weapon. But that's self-defense. Capital punishment is obviously murder).
2. It's racially biased. We mostly kill black people. (See above, or just read the damned newspaper in Texas)
3. It's economically biased. If you can afford a real attorney, you'll get life in prison. And public defenders simply cannot possibly give a real defense.
4. It's more expensive. Cheaper to pay for lifetime incarceration than to pay for all the appeals after the fact. We provide little for actual trial expenses, but then pay millions for appeals after the trial has been botched.
(nod to Kevin Lewis)
3 comments:
Cheaper to pay for lifetime incarceration than to pay for all the appeals after the fact. We provide little for actual trial expenses, but then pay millions for appeals after the trial has been botched.
However, doesn't this (and the previous points about racial and economic bias) imply that if we abolished the death penalty, then poor and black defendants might actually get worse overall justice? After all, surely the same biases would exist in making them more likely to be convicted of life in prison, but then we would be much less willing to pay for the appeals to ensure that justice was done. If they're just rotting in prison for life, we'd let them sit there.
The only way that wouldn't be true, to my mind, is if the "cheaper" argument is actually incorrect, and we'd still be willing to pay to ensure justice for those convicted of life in prison.
I think it's plausible that if you're poor, black, and innocent, it may be better to be convicted with the death penalty than to be convicted of life in prison. The former appears to ensure that you will get much better representation and support on appeal than the latter.
Remember that these error rates are measured by assuming that the government is doing justice on appeal. For that reason, the error rate may appear lower in life sentences simply because we don't provide those expensive resources to enable the poor defendants to obtain justice, but I don't think that would mean that the bias wouldn't exist in reality.
I'd add human error to that list too - Judges and Juries make mistakes.
RE: Shooting Intruders...>Fire a warning shot in their heads and then, one in the ceiling.
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