Black Law Students Association questions race and death penalty
ERIN LaRUFFA
News Writer
In perhaps an unusual way of celebrating Black History Month, Notre Dame's Black Law Students Association brought together four white males Tuesday night to discuss racism in America.
These four men — two of them lawyers and two of them law school professors —addressed race as it relates to the criminal justice system in a panel discussion entitled "The Disproportionate Application of the Death Penalty on African Americans."
"We should do more things like this at the law school," said Richard Garnett, the Notre Dame law school professor who moderated the discussion.
The anti-death penalty Garnett was joined by two other abolitionists, Speedy Rice of Gonzaga Law School and Richard Kammen, a capital litigator with over 20 years of experience in death penalty cases.
One of the most significant factors in a prosecutor's decision to seek the death penalty is the race of the victim, according to Kammen.
"If the victim is black, the case is more likely by a huge margin to be a capital case," Kammen said. "The race of the defendant also has tremendous significance. There is a vain of racism that pervades many, many jurisdictions."
Rice cited statistics indicating that while African American males make up 6 percent of the general U.S. population, 43 percent of death row inmates come from this demographic.
"You can't deny something is going on," said Rice. "African American crime is not substantially higher than their rate in the population. It's not disproportionate."
The one death penalty advocate on the panel, St. Joseph County prosecuting attorney Christopher Toth, disagreed with that assessment.
"We try to be colorblind. We try to have a standard for when we will ask for the death penalty and when we will not," Toth said.
Prosecutors in St. Joseph County, according to Toth, will typically ask for the death penalty in four types of murder cases: multiple murders, murders of children, murders of police officers and murders involving torture.
"This is our policy — barring other extraordinary circumstances," said Toth. "You have to be sure you don't apply the death penalty so there's insidious racism against blacks."
Racial discrimination, however, is not the only problem Kammen and Rice have with capital punishment. Other factors, such as the economic status of the defendant, also determine whether district attorneys seek the death penalty, Kammen said.
"We in this country don't kill rich people," he said. "If O.J. Simpson had been O.J. Jones, that probably would have been a capital case."
Political considerations also play a role in decisions to seek the death penalty, Kammen said.
"You cannot understand the death penalty in American unless you understand one thing—it is driven by politics," he said. "The case that becomes the death penalty case is symbolic, and in that sense it is driven by politics."
But the death penalty is just one problem in the criminal justice system, according to Rice, who added that 50 percent of the U.S. prisoners are African American males.
"I think this system is corrupt. I think it is corrosive to our society. And I think it's the death penalty that drives the corruption," he said.
Another underlying factor in this debate over racism is the more basic question of whether capital punishment is right even when applied fairly, the panelists all pointed out.
"We've got a flawed death penalty system, and racism is a big part of it," said Rice. "It's just got to be gone if we want to have dignity in the criminal justice system."
Toth, on the other hand, believes the death penalty is a proper form of punishment for some crimes.
"There are some crimes that … show such as callous indifference to life, the only punishment that rise to that level is the death penalty," he said.
In fact, he added, some crimes are so heinous that "the only way you can show respect for human life" is to seek the death penalty. Toth also said that capital punishment does deter some murders, a contention with which death penalty opponents disagree.
"When we talk about sanctions, we have to understand that it's not the death penalty or nothing," Kammen said, explaining that life in prison without parole is often an option prosecutors can seek.
All News Stories for Wednesday, February 28, 2001
