Monday, November 14, 2011

Death sentence can be swayed by race


The topic of the death penalty is something that leads to a lot of heated debates and questions of ethics.  One statement posed in this article http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/opinion/09dow.html, is that the decision to use the death penalty is swayed by race.  This article gives stats and previous examples of court decisions that show a long standing trend of colored people receiving far more death sentences than their white counterparts who commit the same crimes.  The fact that, when it comes to something as serious as the death sentence, the current American justice system is biased can be a scary thought.  Rightfully so, nothing else could show how broken the system is, at least in the court decisions on using the death penalty, if this proved to be true.
Having taken criminal justice classes in the past, this topic has actually been brought up quite a bit.  And so far, it would seem that what is stated in the article is the truth.  To not see the clear relation between the color of skin and the sentence given (of death) and to brush it off as mere coincidence seems like blatant ignorance.  However, of course people cannot now say that they have proved the courts to be broken, as that can lead to quite a bit of turmoil, but they cannot let this “trend” to continue.

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