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Prison Sentences for Black Men Are 20% Longer Than Those for White Men for Same Crimes

By Noel Brinkerhoff | AllGov | February 20, 2013

Federal judges have handed down longer prison sentences for black men than for white men—for the same or similar crimes committed— since 2005, when a court ruling gave judges more discretion in deciding jail times for convicted criminals.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission revealed in a new report that the sentences of black men were on average 19.5% longer than the sentences of white men from December 2007 to September 2011.

The commission did not mention racism as a factor in sentencing decisions, but did write that judges “make sentencing decisions based on many legitimate considerations that are not or cannot be measured.”

To address the disparity, commissioners recommended that federal judges give sentencing guidelines more weight. They also said appeals courts should more carefully examine sentences that fall beyond the guidelines.

Eight years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 1984 law requiring federal judges to impose sentences within the range of the federal sentencing guidelines, which are set by the commission.

Critics of the new report say that the commission focused on the tail end of the criminal justice process, to the exclusion of earlier stages when bias can occur, such as at the time of arrest or plea being entered. Considering such data could have altered the study’s results, they claim.

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February 21, 2013 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | 14 Comments

Guilty Until Proven Innocent?

By Cassandra Stubbs, ACLU Capital Punishment Project | May 22, 2012

This week, Northwestern and the University of Michigan law schools released a National Registry of Exonerations, a new database chronicling the ever-growing number of exonerees from our nation’s criminal justice system.   The database includes over 2,000 people who spent time – sometimes decades – in prison after being wrongfully convicted of serious crimes. This includes over 100 wrongfully convicted of capital murder – which means they were awaiting execution before their sentences were reversed. The Death Penalty information Center, which tracks information about the death penalty, has documented 140 cases where inmates were released from death row with evidence of their innocence.

As astounding as the numbers in the database are, the list of the innocent is likely far longer than what is documented in this valuable resource – and not all of them were exonerated in time. Troy Davis, an African-American man in Georgia, Carlos DeLuna, a Latino man in Texas, and Cameron Todd Willingham, a white man in Texas, were all executed despite compelling evidence of innocence.   The judicial system failed these men twice: it failed them first by convicting them of crimes of which they were likely innocent, and it failed them again by denying them meaningful opportunities to prove their innocence, in time to save their lives.

The National Registry of Exonerations compiles explanations across cases, helping shed light on just how these wrongful convictions happen. The explanations are themselves deeply troubling: false accusations or perjury played a role in a full half of the cases (51%); official misconduct contributed to a large percentage of the wrongful convictions (42%); and junk science or false or misleading evidence played a role in almost a quarter of the cases (24%).   Although the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, along with many others, continue to push for important reforms in the area of junk science, it is hard to be optimistic that the problems of perjury or police misconduct will ever fully be untangled from the criminal justice system.   Ending the death penalty will not solve these problems – but it will make sure that no one else pays for these flaws with his or her life.

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May 23, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , , | Leave a comment