"The Ultimate Sanction Because of Race"

As highlighted by Adam Liptak in today's New York Times, there's a new study (pdf) out on the role of race in sentencing:

The unexceptional finding is that defendants who kill whites are more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill blacks. More than 20 studies around the nation have come to similar conclusions.

But the new study also detected a more straightforward disparity. It found that the race of the defendant by itself plays a major role in explaining who is sentenced to death.

It has never been conclusively proven that, all else being equal, blacks are more likely to be sentenced to death than whites in the three decades since the Supreme
Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Many experts, including some opposed to the death penalty, have said that evidence of that sort of direct discrimination is spotty and equivocal...

His statistics have profound implications. For every 100 black defendants and 100 white defendants indicted for capital murder in Harris County, Professor Phillips found that an average of 12 white defendants and 17 black ones would be sent to death row. In other words, Professor Phillips wrote, “five black defendants would be sentenced to the ultimate sanction because of race.”

As the article points out, the disparities in sentencing dependent upon the race of the defendant have been documented and acknowledged for some time. Here in Indiana, a study found that those convicted of killing a white person are three times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill a black person. However, in light of this new study, some new research and examination of racial disparities may be in order.