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51 Colum. Hum. Rts. L. Rev. 983 (2019-2020)
Valuing Black Lives: A Case for Ending the Death Penalty

handle is hein.journals/colhr51 and id is 983 raw text is: VALUING BLACK LIVES: A CASE FOR ENDING THE DEATH PENALTY Alexis Hoag* ABSTRACT Since Furman v. Georgia, capital punishment jurisprudence has equipped decisionmakers with increased structure, guidance, and narrowing in death sentencing in an effort to eliminate the arbitrary imposition of death. Yet, these efforts have been largely unsuccessful given the wide discretion built into capital sentencing which allows for prejudice, bias, and racism to persist. Juries continue to sentence a disproportionately high number of defendants who have been convicted of murdering white victims to death. As a result, death sentencing schemes tend to undervalue Black murder victims' lives. Any effort to eliminate the disparity must center on the undervaluation of Black lives. This Article suggests that the next challenge to the death penalty should be on equal protection grounds based on the undervaluation of Black lives. It highlights that the Fourteenth Amendment was originally intended, in part, to extend the equal protection of the laws to Black victims of crime. The Article then explores the pitfalls of other race-based challenges to the death penalty. And demonstrates that a challenge based on disparities in capitally prosecuting white and Black victim cases could end capital * Practitioner in Residence, Eric H. Holder Jr. Initiative for Civil and Political Rights, Columbia University; Lecturer in Law, Columbia Law School; J.D., New York University School of Law; B.A., Yale University. I am grateful to Daniel Harawa, Natasha Merle, Bernard Harcourt, and Jeffrey Fagan for their invaluable feedback. I also benefited from engagement and collaboration of the attendees at the Columbia Human Rights Law Review's 2019-2020 Symposium, Furman's Legacy: New Research on the Overbreadth of Capital Punishment. For her stellar research assistance, I am thankful for Claudia Kassner. For their community, support, and accountability, I thank the brilliant women of Lutie on the Hudson, especially Deborah Archer. I'm also grateful for the editorial expertise of the Columbia Law School Human Rights Law Review staff, particularly Idun Klakegg, Kobina Quaye, and Will Wilder.

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