Category Archives: racial disparity

Racism in the death penalty? We’re North Carolina after all!

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Tar_Heel_postcard

What do you call people from North Carolina? Whatever that word is, they were faced with a choice: do they appear to be racist murderers or just plain Northeastern Liberal Sissies?

I know what I’d choose and I know what stereotype says that the North Carolinians would choose. And proving that stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason, they chose the former. The Senate just repealed (here‘s the bill) the Racial Justice Act, which allows inmates to use statistics to prove that their death sentences are obtained based on racial injustice.

Just last year I was congratulating the Second in Flight State for a decision reversing the death sentence for a man who proved that racial bias played a significant role in the jury selection process. The opinion by Judge Weeks [PDF] said that:

Race played a “persistent, pervasive and distorting role” in jury selection and couldn’t be explained other than that “prosecutors have intentionally discriminated” against Robinson and other capital defendants statewide, Weeks said. Prosecutors eliminated black jurors more than twice as often as white jurors, according to a study by two Michigan State University law professors Weeks said he found highly reliable.

The opinion relied in part on a study [PDF] by Michigan State University. This was all made possible due to the Racial Justice Act, an avant-garde piece of legislation enacted in North Carolina that did exactly what the United States Supreme Court prohibited a quarter century ago in McCleskey v. Kemp. Continue reading →

The cost of your conviction

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This attitude that I’ve written about before: the attitude of us vs. them, which is enshrined in the ‘tough on crime’ policies of the 80s and 90s, has consequences. Real life consequences that affect you and me, the “us”, as much as they affect the “them”. There’s a financial cost to society that goes unnoticed: the high cost of incarceration, the cost of having non-productive members of society and the cost of destroyed lives. We bear the burden of all of these.

The New York Times has this lengthy piece on the consequences that long-term incarceration strategies have on families. From driving family members to welfare, to neglect in childcare:

“I thought I was going to lose my mind,” he said. “I felt so bad leaving my wife alone with our daughters. When they were young, they’d ask on the phone where I was, and I’d tell them I was away at camp.”

His wife went on welfare and turned to relatives to care for their daughters while she visited him at prisons in Tennessee, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico.  “I wanted to work, but I couldn’t have a job and go visit him,” Ms. Hamilton said. “When he was in New Mexico, it would take me three days to get there on the bus. I’d go out there and stay for a month in a trailer near the prison.”

In Washington, she and her daughters moved from relative to relative, not always together. During one homeless spell, Ms. Hamilton slept by herself for a month in her car. She eventually found a federally subsidized apartment of her own, and once the children were in school she took part-time jobs. But the scrimping never stopped. “We had a lot of Oodles of Noodles,” she recalled.

to increasing rates of sexually transmitted diseases and teen pregnancy: Continue reading →

A ray of sunlight in East Haven

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the land of steady racism

East Haven, Connecticut’s most famous modern day “sundown town“, has just learned what it feels like to be on the other end of a good scrubbing. The town, you will recall, made the news when the DOJ filed a federal lawsuit alleging racial profiling and violation of civil rights for its policy of targeting minorities for traffic and other violations. From the DOJ report [PDF]:

  • The East Haven Police Department (EHPD) conducted disproportionate traffic stops of Latinos. Latinos accounted for 24.8% of the stops in the 4pm-12am shift, which is typically the busiest. The numbers for the other shifts were 17.8% and 14.7%.
  • However, comparing the percentage of Latinos stopped to the percentage of Latinos in the population reveals a starker difference. Latinos accounted for 19.9% of all traffic stops, but make up only 8.3% of East Haven drivers (and 15.5% of East Haven and surrounding towns).
  • Officers heavily patrol known Latino areas, lying in wait for people leaving predominantly Latino-oriented businesses.
  • Other methods use include following cars until a traffic violation occurs, out-of-state license plates known to be “forged”, citing speeding but writing little to no information about the speeding on the ticket itself.
  • Latinos face harsher treatment after being stopped: they are more likely to be arrested and have their cars towed for traffic violations than non-Latinos.

Yesterday, in the wake of another guilty plea by one of the embattled police officers, the town and the DOJ announced an agreement that they entered into, which will halt the lawsuit for the time being. The consent decree is 54 pages long and I’ve embedded it below. In it, East Haven agrees that:

  • EHPD officers shall conduct investigatory stops or detentions only where the officer has reasonable suspicion that a person has been, is, or is about to be engaged in the commission of a crime.
  • EHPD officers shall not use “canned” or conclusory language in any reports documentinginvestigatory stops, detentions and searches. Articulation of reasonable suspicion andprobable cause shall be specific and clear.
  • EHPD officers shall not use or rely on information known to be materially false or incorrect in effectuating an investigatory stop or detention.
  • EHPD officers shall not use demographic category as a factor, to any extent or degree, in establishing reasonable suspicion or probable cause, except as part of an actual and credible description of a specific suspect in an ongoing investigation.
  • EHPD officers shall not use demographic category in exercising discretion to conduct a warrantless search or to seek a search warrant, except as part of an actual and credible description of a specific suspect in an ongoing investigation.
  • Where an officer seeks consent for a search, the officer shall affirmatively inform the subject of his or her right to refuse and to revoke consent at any time, articulate and document the independent legal justification for the search, and document the subject’s consent on a written form that explains these rights
  • EHPD officers shall only arrest an individual where the officer has probable cause. In effectuating an arrest, EHPD officers shall not rely on information known to be materially false or incorrect. Officers may not consider demographic category in effecting an arrest, except as part of an actual and credible description of a specific suspect in an ongoing investigation.

Sadly, I could go on. This is pretty basic stuff here that the EHPD has failed to do in the past and needs to do in the future to rectify their despicable practice of targeting minorities. What’s interesting, though, is that the decree also includes a provision stating clearly that citizens have the right to observe and record police conduct and that the EHPD cannot interfere with that. This is obviously a response to the glut of arrests state-wide and across the country of people who were merely recording police activity:

  • EHPD shall ensure that onlookers or bystanders may witness, observe, record, and/or comment on officer conduct, including stops, detentions, searches, arrests, or uses of force in accordance with their rights, immunities, and privileges secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.
  • Officers shall respect the right of civilians to observe, record, and/or verbally comment on or complain about the performance of police duties occurring in public, and EHPD shall ensure that officers understand that exercising this right serves important public purposes.
  • Individuals observing stops, detentions, arrests and other incidents shall be permitted to remain in the proximity of the incident unless there is an actual and articulable law enforcement basis to move an individual, such as: an individual’s presence would jeopardize the safety of the officer, the suspect, or others in the vicinity; the individual violates the law; or the individual incites others to violate the law.
  • Individuals shall be permitted to record police officer enforcement activities by camera,video recorder, cell phone recorder, or other means, unless there is an actual and articulable law enforcement basis to deny permission.
  • Officers shall not threaten, intimidate, or otherwise discourage an individual from remaining in the proximity of or recording police officer enforcement activities.
  • Officers shall not seize or otherwise coerce production of recorded sounds or images,without obtaining a warrant, or order an individual to destroy such recordings. Where an officer has a reasonable belief that a bystander or witness has captured a recording of critical evidence related to a felony, the officer may secure such evidence for no more than three hours while a legal subpoena, search warrant, or other valid order is obtained.

Of course, this does nothing but force the members of the town’s police department and the mayor to behave in an orderly fashion. The consent decree does nothing to actually enhance their tolerance of minorities. East Haven Mayor Joseph Maturo, after all, is the same man who upon being re-elected in 2011, reinstated suspended Police Chief Gallo and then allowed him to retire. He’s also the man who, upon being asked what he was going to do for the Latino community in the wake of these allegations, glibly stated that he might go home and eat a taco.

The question, of course, is whether this ray of sunlight will disinfect the whole town in years to come or whether, when the FBI has moved on, the windows will be shuttered again and embedded racism allowed to fester again. Rev. Manship, whose arrest for videotaping the harassment of a Latino shop-owner kickstarted this effort, says just as much:

“When the spotlight’s on, everybody’s behaving well,” Manship said, “so the real test for this will be years after the Department of Justice has left East Haven and [see if we] can have a Police Department where everybody is comfortable, safe, and can go to and not be afraid of.”

Isn’t that what we should want?


 

Death on death’s doorstep

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[You should've seen the alternate title I had lined up for this post: Death's Final Countdown.]

In the early morning hours of April 11, 2012, the people of Connecticut, through their elected legislature, decided that they would no longer permit their own to be put to death with the imprimatur of official state action. For those like me, who are abolitionists, it was only half a victory: the measure was prospective only. So while we rejoiced, we did so with caution and measure, because there were still 11 men who could be executed by the State and at least two more who could legally join them on death row.

Even before the ink that formed the Governor’s signature on the “repeal” bill was dry, chatter was building that there would soon be a push to make the repeal retrospective as well. Despite the clear language that this piece of legislation applied only to future crimes, many were skeptical that such a measure could pass constitutional muster. After all, what is more “arbitrary and capricious” than deciding who lives and dies based on a date?

Soon, we will find out if those skeptics were indeed correct. The Connecticut Supreme Court has granted a motion for reconsideration in the death penalty appeal of Eduardo Santiago (who was one of the 11 on death row, but whose death sentence the Supreme Court reversed [PDF] on other grounds in June). Instead of going straight to another penalty phase hearing, Santiago’s lawyer asked the Supreme Court to rule whether the death penalty is even a legal option in his case, given the repeal. The Supreme Court agreed to do so.

There’s also a similar motion pending in the case of Richard Rozkowski, who’s currently awaiting another penalty phase hearing. I wouldn’t be surprised if that were joined with the Santiago appeal at some point.

Meanwhile, the trial of the death penalty on charges of racial and geographic bias continues undeterred this week, despite the abomination that is McCleskey. Professor John C. Donohue’s study here in CT isn’t the only one to find great bias in the application of the death penalty. See this recent paper on a study of one county in California.

Frankly, the conclusion that the death penalty needs to be taken off life support is inescapable to me when viewed the prism of stories like that of Terrance Williams, where 5 jurors signed a letter stating that they were unaware that the alternative to death was life without the possibility of release; or that of Robert Wayne Holsey, whose lead attorney confessed that he drank a quart of vodka every day during the trial, and yet the 11th Circuit upheld [PDF] the death sentence, because nothing would’ve made a difference.

Will it be taken off life support? Or will it be allowed to live, weakened, cowering in a corner, yet poisonous and infecting us all? We’ll find out soon enough.

A quart a day keeps effectiveness at bay.

 

 

State has no guidelines or policies for seeking death

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The first day of the ‘racial and geographic disparity in the death penalty‘ trial ended pretty abruptly today, after the testimony of just the Chief State’s Attorney Kevin Kane. After being peppered with questions about his time as the supervisor of the New London State’s Attorney’s Office and his decisions to seek the death penalty in some cases and not in others, both sides apparently agreed to forgo questioning of all the other 13 chief prosecutors and some former ones in exchange for a stipulation.

While I’m not particularly clear on whether I’m in agreement over forgoing the questioning of the prosecutors and subjecting their decision making to scrutiny, the stipulation gained is a pretty damning one:

That from 1973 until today no written or oral guidelines or policies have been used by states attorneys or chief states attorneys to make decisions on an initial charge, whether to seek the death penalty or whether to reduce a charge.

There is no oversight by chief states attorney over decisions make by states attorneys on whether to seek the death penalty.

Each states attorney makes decisions on charging capital felony and seeking death based on criteria that is appropriate in their case.

Essentially, each judicial district is an island unto itself and each chief prosecutor makes the decision to seek the death penalty based on his or her own view of the aggravating and mitigating factors and his own personal opinion as to the seriousness of the case. While Attorney Kane, as I predicted yesterday, maintained that his decisions were based on the statute itself and factors contained therein, the bottom line remains inescapably that the decision to seek the death penalty is entirely arbitrary. Continue reading →

Racial disparity to finally take center stage

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Starting tomorrow, the geographically and racially arbitrary application of Connecticut’s death penalty will be put on trial in a makeshift courtroom in the state’s only maximum security prison, which, in a twist of unintended irony, is called Northern.

The disparity lawsuit, which I’ve written about for years now, will focus on whether the decision to seek the death penalty in Connecticut courts is influenced by race (duh) and geography (hello, Waterbury). Not surprisingly, this will be a battle of experts: John Donohue, hired by the Office of the Chief Public Defender and some other guy hired by the Office of the Chief State’s Attorney. Here‘s [PDF] the latest version of the study prepared by Donohue and read this prior post for a summary. The New York times created this nifty graphic summarizing the findings of the study:

The trial is also expected to feature the testimony of various State’s Attorneys from across the state as they try to explain their justifications for seeking death in one case as opposed to life in another. There will be mountains of obfuscation and chest-thumping and people will get their backs up, as they are wont to do when their decisions are questioned in the light of racial biases. There will be plenty of explanations provided for choosing one case over the other, perhaps an appeal to the specific emotional tugs of one case or the personal horror of another and lots of indignation and calls to the prosecutors’ sense of duty and justice. And that’s all well and good, but them facts are the facts and it seems that – intentional or otherwise – a systemic bias does exist in this state: you’re more likely to have the death penalty sought against you if your victim is a white female and certainly more so if the crime you commit happens to be within the geographic boundaries of the Judicial District of Waterbury.

No amount of hand-waving or imploring that these are “just good folks conscientiously applying the law” should be allowed to overshadow and hide the fact that the system punishes those whose ethnic status is anything other than “white”.

It is important to remember that a bias need not be explicit: that there need not be an explicit preference for one gender or one race over another. Rather, some biases are insidious and work subconsciously and those, after all, are the most dangerous biases of all.

What this trial is not about, however, is whether the death penalty repeal in Connecticut is to be applied retroactively. That was explicitly rejected by the judge as an additional claim in this lawsuit because goddammit it’s dragged on long enough already or something. Not like that’s probably the most important issue that our courts are going to have to address in the near future or anything. But judicial efficiency and all that.

That the death penalty is sought – and applied – in an arbitrary fashion should really come as no surprise to anyone following this area of jurisprudence with just a little bit of brain power, but will the law – which is always notoriously last in these situations – finally catch up? We’ll find out starting tomorrow.

Relegating McCleskey

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Twenty five years ago yesterday, the United States Supreme Court issued one if its most shameful opinions in recent history: McCleskey v. Kemp, in which it willfully turned a blind eye to racial discrimination in death penalty cases and prohibited citizens from raising claims of racial bias leading to the imposition of death sentences. The Court in McCleskey, assuming that the Baldus study [.doc] was accurate, nevertheless:

categorically rejected the idea that statistical evidence was sufficient to show a constitutional violation, requiring instead that a defendant show “exceptionally clear proof” of discrimination under the facts of his or her own case. This near impossibility effectively shut the door to any thing short of “smoking gun” evidence of intentional discrimination — evidence that is unlikely to exist, or unlikely to be discovered by the defense.

From this post the ACLU’s McCleskey project website. That is to say, the Court made it near impossible to prove the standard, particularly in light of the fact that contacting individual jurors and asking them about their personal racial biases is a non-starter. The Court’s rationale in rejecting McCleskey’s claim wasn’t that racial discrimination in the criminal justice system didn’t exist, but rather that it was “inevitable” and, as Justice Brennan put it, the majority was afraid of having to dispense too much justice. Rather than confront the reality that the system is terribly flawed and skewed against people of color, especially in the death penalty context, the Court did what was natural to any petulant 5-year old: run in the other direction, hands over their ears, yelling at the top of their lungs so as to not let reality set in.

[Interestingly, as heretofore unknown to me, was a Scalia memorandum prior to the decision in McCleskey, which said:

Since it is my view that the unconscious operation of irrational sympathies and antipathies, including racial, upon jury decisions and (hence) prosecutorial decisions is real, acknowledged in the decisions of this court, and ineradicable, I cannot say that all I need is more proof.

Shorter Scalia: it's there, it's real and we can't change it, so why even bother?]

McCleskey, of course, is also famous for being the one vote that Justice Powell, in his later years, regretted. Which brings me to the point of this post. While no courts would ever seriously consider a systemic bias claim in light of McCleskey, that doesn’t mean legislatures aren’t free to mandate such a consideration. In 2009, North Carolina did just that, with its Racial Justice Act. And last week, we saw the results. In the first ever decision applying the RJA, Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks held [PDF] that Marcus Robinson’s death sentence must be commuted to life without the possibility of release because of racial bias in the jury selection process:

Race played a “persistent, pervasive and distorting role” in jury selection and couldn’t be explained other than that “prosecutors have intentionally discriminated” against Robinson and other capital defendants statewide, Weeks said. Prosecutors eliminated black jurors more than twice as often as white jurors, according to a study by two Michigan State University law professors Weeks said he found highly reliable.

The Michigan State University study [PDF] produced some stunning findings:

It reported that, of almost 160 people on North Carolina’s death row, 31 had all-white juries, and 38 had only one person of color.

More here. The MSU study of capital charging and sentencing found that those who kill whites are more likely to get the death penalty than those who kill blacks. The MSU study found that a defendant is 2.6 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white.

It isn’t enough for us in the system to “know” that there is racial bias. It isn’t enough for us to throw our hands up and shrug. It isn’t enough that we pay lip service. We must relegate McCleskey to the dustbin of history, alongside cases like Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson. We must do something more. David Baldus, may he rest in peace, did. Gov. Beverly Perdue, who vetoed a repeal of the RJA, did. Judge Greg Weeks did.

Who’s next?