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.

Quote of the Day

I hate that we’re speculating about the 2012 presidential race already, but I loved this quote from Andrew Sullivan:

I think almost anyone can defeat Romney, a hologram of a politician defined only by ambition and great hair. Palin would destroy him.

That about sums up my opinion of Mitt Romney. He looks like the guy who would be playing the president in a made-for-TV movie about an asteroid strike.

The 5th Amendment

A Regent law professor explains why you should never talk to the police:

Debunking immigration myths

Jeb Bush and Robert Putnam convincingly debunk the idea that Hispanic immigrants are somehow more of a threat to American identity than previous waves of immigration. Cleverly, they quote a famous American leader on the immigration problem:

Few of their children in the country learn English. The signs in our streets have inscriptions in both languages. . . . Unless the stream of their importation could be turned . . . they will soon so outnumber us that we will not preserve our language, and even our government will become precarious.

No, that wasn’t Lou Dobbs or some Tea Partier. It was Benjamin Franklin, in 1753, talking about German immigrants.

After laying out the case that all immigrant waves follow similar patterns (isolated enclaves at first, but then bilingual 2nd generation children and then eventually intermarriage and full assimilation, while retaining important cultural heritages), Bush and Putnam make three suggestions:

• Low-cost English classes for immigrants
• Invest in public education, to foster a shared national identity
• Assist communities experiencing rapid immigration, especially schools and hospitals, which bear the brunt of the costs while everyone shares in the economic benefits

The English classes, especially, seem like a no-brainer. If you are willing to hold up a sign that angrily says “Learn English!”, you should be willing to put up a sign that says “Learn English here”.

The Chamomile Tea Party

I’m enjoying these WWII propaganda-style posters from the Chamomile Tea Party.

Urban/rural political differences

Karl Smith:

Urbanites clearly see government in more favorable lights than suburban and rural dwellers for the simple reason that proximity breeds externality. Spillovers of all sorts, positive and negative are more likely in the city and demands for a government capable of handling negative spillovers will increase.

An externality, as Jesse would doubtlessly be better able to explain, is a result (cost or benefit) that happens to folks who didn’t agree to what caused the result. So, a factory next to a river dumps polluted water into the river. They benefit from this (free waste-removal!) but the people down the river who suffer the consequences (our fish are dead! we can’t go swimming!) don’t get any benefit. This is among the major reasons a free market needs some amount of government regulation to function.

This is partly the idea behind some kind of carbon tax. It’s not just “oil is bad, we need to stop it with a tax”. It’s the idea that the price of oil does not reflect its true cost in terms of environmental damage, healthcare costs, etc. Not to mention its potential for black swan events like the BP oil spill.

Anyway, it makes sense to think that more rural dwellers, who are spaced further apart and do not as frequently face the kind of situations that call for government intervention, would tend to a more libertarian economic/government perspective.

But I do think cultural values play a large role here. I recently saw this blog post with a blurb from some research which found that

the more educated on average believe themselves to be more left wing than their actual beliefs on a substantive issue might suggest.

Well, that makes sense too. If your peer group is all of one political persuasion, not only will there be subtle but intense social pressure for you to follow suit, but you may not have met enough people on the Other Side to realize they are just as kind, reasonable, and thoughtful as the people in your own tribe. And you probably won’t have noticed that your actual policy differences are not generally the unbridgeable apocalyptic divides of political rhetoric.

So which is it: Are political differences the result of differing life experiences based on location, or some lizard-brain us vs. them mechanism based on peer group echo chambers? Or neither, or both?

How divorce spreads

Andrew Sullivan linked to this interesting study on how divorce spreads. The main point?

Overall, the results suggest that attending to the health of one’s friends’ marriages serves to support and enhance the durability of one’s own relationship, and that, from a policy perspective, divorce should be understood as a collective phenomenon that extends far beyond those directly affected.

Happy Father’s Day

Especially to Jesse, brand new father of two. I’ll try to step up my posting, since he will probably be quite occupied for the foreseeable future.

All the evidence

Good article up at Slate about the need to test all evidence from crime scenes. In our post-CSI world, most people probably think that happens as a matter of course. It does not.

…[T]he most troubling aspect of Skinner’s case is the biological material collected from the crime scene. Law enforcement officials tested the small blood smears on Skinner’s shirt, and those matched two of the three victims. But given that Skinner admits he was at the crime scene and says he awoke to find the victims’ bodies, it isn’t surprising that he’d have some of their blood on his shirt. The blood on the murder weapons has never been DNA tested. Nor has any material from the rape kit taken from Busby. The state also never tested skin cells taken from under Busby’s fingernails, or a blood-stained windbreaker left at the scene that witnesses say matched one often worn by Donnell. “They only tested the material they thought would implicate Skinner,” Protess told me via phone. “They fixated on their suspect, and once they thought they had enough for a conviction, they stopped.”

Actually, it’s worse than that. In 2000, on an episode of the Nancy Grace Show, Protess publicly challenged Skinner’s prosecutor to test the remaining biological evidence, even offering to pay for the testing himself. “He agreed, and I actually sent him an e-mail complimenting him,” Protess says. But when mitochondrial DNA testing of the hair Busby was clutching in her hand at the time of her death didn’t match Busby or Skinner, the state halted the testing of any more evidence and has refused to run any tests since. As Skinner’s execution neared in March, Texas Gov. Perry again declined to grant Skinner a stay so the evidence could be tested, even after a lab in Arizona offered to conduct the tests for free. Never mind that all of this comes amid continuing controversy over Texas’ 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, a man many believe was innocent, as well as allegations that Texas Gov. Rick Perry subsequently undermined an investigation into the dubious forensic evidence used at Willingham’s trial.

…

DNA testing may well confirm Hank Skinner’s guilt, too. But the incriminating DNA may also match Robert Donnell (or someone else). In which case Skinner would become the 252nd person to be exonerated by DNA. Either way, we’d know. By refusing to answer the question, Texas officials are acting as if preserving a conviction is more important than knowing for certain who killed Twila Busby and her sons.

Localism

Scot McKnight (HT: Gerardo Marti)

It seems wildly visionary and profoundly problem-solving for a young adult to go to Asia or to Africa or to South America but it is hardly an experience to go next door and do the very same deed of compassion and justice. The vision of the Christian church is that the vision of Jesus needs to find shape in a local community of local people who care about the local community in local ways. This is not about how best to “build a church” so much as how best to contribute in love to our world. Doing it locally is less sexy; but local servants are far more influential than foreign rich kids who are often enough motivated to help for a while but not stick around long enough to make change sustainable.