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35 Santa Clara L. Rev. 433 (1994-1995)
Discrimination, Death and Denial: The Tolerance of Racial Discrimination in Infliction of the Death Penalty

handle is hein.journals/saclr35 and id is 451 raw text is: DISCRIMINATION, DEATH AND DENIAL: THE TOLERANCE OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN INFLICTION OF THE DEATH PENALTY Stephen B. Bright* I. INTRODUCTION Capital punishment, one of America's most prominent vestiges of slavery and racial violence, is flourishing once again in the United States. After a moratorium on execu- tions in the 1960s and '70s, the execution of human beings by the state has become routine. Over 3,000 men, women and children are on death rows throughout the nation waiting to be electrocuted, injected, shot, hung or gassed.' Those being executed and awaiting their deaths are no different from those selected for execution in the past: virtu- ally all are poor; about half are members of racial minorities; and the overwhelming majority were sentenced to death for crimes against white victims.2 Many suffer from severe mental impairments or limitations and many others were the victims of the most brutal physical, sexual and psychological abuse during their childhoods.3 The death penalty was declared unconstitutional in 1972 due to arbitrariness and discrimination against racial minor- * Director, Southern Center for Human Rights, Atlanta, Georgia; Visiting Lecturer in Law, Harvard and Yale Law Schools. B.A. 1971, J.D. 1975, Univer- sity of Kentucky. The author has represented persons facing the death penalty at trials, on appeals, and in post conviction proceedings since 1979. This article draws upon those experiences as well as the authorities cited. 1. Death Row U.S.A., NAACP LEGAL DEF. & EDUC. FUND, INc., at 1 (Sum- mer 1995) (reporting that there were 3,028 persons under sentence of death as of Aug. 31, 1995). 2. Id. at 1, 3 (reporting that over half of those under death sentence are African-American, Latino, Native American or Asian, and that in 82 percent of the cases in which executions have been carried out, the victims were white). 3. See, e.g., Dorothy Otnow Lewis et al., Psychiatric, Neurological and Psychoeducational Characteristics of 15 Death Row Inmates in the United States, 145 Am. JuR. Psy. 838 (1986). The author has observed the presence of these factors, virtually without exception, in capital cases he has handled and supervised, as well as in cases in which he has consulted other lawyers. 433

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