Legal Lynching—Blacks Preferred
By Shumon Alam

The “whites only” signs have been removed from the glass windows of the stores, the separate water fountains have been merged into one and the schools have been desegregated in the hope that children of all races will mingle together in the happy American melting pot. The American dream ended with a rude awakening into a realization that the ghosts of slavery and Jim Crow are still haunting the country.

The blunt social racism has now turned into a systematic one. Today Blacks are not being lynched in broad daylight by a white mob, but everyday they are being discriminated against by the criminal justice system. Cops are emptying their guns on Black citizens and justifying their actions by saying that the person was in the dark and looked like he was holding a gun. Courts are sending many Blacks to prison without a fair trial. The U.S. prison system is disproportionately filled with young Black men. Like many other practices of the criminal justice system, from jury selection, to conviction, and execution, capital punishment is also tainted by the evil of racial prejudice.

In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court declared the death penalty unconstitutional as cruel and unusual punishment. The Court also stated that racial biases were also prevalent in handing out capital punishment. In 1976 when the death penalty was re-instituted, it became a nationwide tool to discriminate against African American capital case defendants. Even the U.S. government has acknowledged the racial discrimination of Capital punishment. In a report published in 1990, the General Accounting office found a “pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing and imposition of the death penalty.”

According to Amnesty international, as of January 1, 1999, more than 3,500 prisoners are on death row and almost 42% of them are Black, although Blacks are only 25% of the population in the U.S. In the state of Maryland there are 17 people in death row and 11 of them are Black. In Maryland there have been only 2 executions since 1976 and both prisoners were Black. In the state of Alabama 60% of the 115 death row inmates are Black.

In the courtroom the color or ethnicity of the defendant and the victim play a major role in determining if he or she will live or die. After reviewing 2500 capital cases from the 1970s, Professor David Baldus concluded that a person accused of killing a white victim was 4.3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than a person accused of killing a Black victim. Of the 500 prisoners executed between 1977 and 1998, 81% were convicted for the murder of a white victim; even though Blacks and Whites are the victims of homicide in almost equal numbers nationwide. Since 1976, eight Whites were executed for killing a Black person, whereas, 112 Blacks were executed for the killing of a white person.

Even at the beginning of a capital cases, inconsistency and blunt racial prejudices are evident. Knowing that the white jurors are more likely to give the death penalty to a Black defendant, prosecutors around the country try to eliminate all Black jurors through so-called peremptory challenges.

In the case of Albert Jefferson, a Black person who was convicted of the murder of a white victim in Chambers County, Alabama, the prosecutor had removed 26 potential Black jurors in order to obtain three all-white juries. Later Jefferson’s lawyers discovered lists made by the prosecutor prior to jury selection, in which the prosecutor divided prospective jurors into four categories: “strong,” “medium,” “weak,” and “Black.”

The District Attorney of Philadelphia made a video tape to teach the prosecutors how to eliminate Black jurors in the capital case of a Black defendant. In the tape he stated “Let’s face it, the Blacks from the low-income areas are less likely to convict. There’s resentment to law enforcement. . . You don’t want those guys on your jury. . . If you get a white teacher in a Black school who’s sick of these guys, that may be the one to accept.”

After having seen the movie Hurricane, most Americans probably patted themselves on the back and went home happy thinking that justice has been served. Unfortunately, hundreds of African-Americans are still waiting in the death houses and their stories are waiting to come out in public. The racial discrimination at every step of the criminal justice system has executed unimaginable numbers of African-Americans. Cynical minds may think that the cross burning bunch wearing white robes and hoods have almost ceased to exist because the criminal justice system has done better job killing the African American.