Race Matters in NC

Link: Study of Death Penalty in North Carolina Shows That ‘Race Matters’

If you are convicted of killing a white person in North Carolina, you are 3 times more likely to be sentenced to death than if you are convicted of killing a black person, according to a recent study.

The authors also looked for any additional factors — such as multiple victims or homicides accompanied by an additional felony, such as rape or robbery — that might explain the disparity in death penalty sentencing. These additional factors partially explained death penalty decisions, but even after statistically controlling for their effect, race remained an important predictor of who was sentenced to death.

An examination of these factors “show that the reason why the probability of a death sentence is higher for those who are suspected of killing whites than for those who are suspected of killing blacks is not because the former cases tend to be more aggravated,” the authors wrote. “Regardless of whether there are zero, one or two additional legally relevant factors present, cases with white victims are more likely to result in a death sentence than are cases with black victims.”

Specifically, the study found that the odds of receiving a death sentence in North Carolina “in a white victim case are on average 2.96 times higher than are the odds of a death sentence in a black victim case.” The finding is statistically significant and the probability of obtaining a similar result if racial bias were not an option is less than 5 percent, according to the authors.

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