The Deadline

More than 80% of the people who have been executed, have been executed for the murder of white victims. How do you account for this? What effect might this have on perceptions of the justice system among people of color?

I really don’t think that you can bring numbers and stats into the justice system like this.  Every single person goes through the same process when it comes to the death penalty. Every single murder case is different because there is a different prosecutor, defendant, and victim. They don’t just give the death penalty out because somebody committed a first degree murder. There is a reason behind every penalty the justice system gives I think it just turned out that way that 80% of the people who have been executed murdered white people. I think this statistic makes the justice system think twice before giving the death sentence for somebody who killed a white person. They probably want to stay away from being prejudice, but still need to enforce the law.

There are currently over 3,000 men and women sentenced to death in the United States. Approximately 65 percent of American voters approve of the death penalty in states where capital punishment is legal. Why do you think the death penalty is so widely supported in this country? What forces do you think shape public opinion on the death penalty?

People support the death penalty because they think of an “eye for an eye” as being the best solution. Most people probably don’t understand everything the death penalty and  the process behind it. These 65 percent of the population think’s that revenge is the best option for a murderer and some of these people probably feel safer if a murderer is killed. I think the media influences the public’s opinion because all they talk about the crime the murderer committed, and how they did it. It makes the public feel bad for the victim and want revenge on the murderer.

What is your reaction to Stephen Bright’s quote about the exonerated prisoners?

“This was the third person released by the journalism students at Northwestern, and of course it doesn’t say much for our legal system when people spend sixteen years on death row for a crime they… didn’t commit. And that ultimately comes to light not because of the police or the prosecution, or the defense lawyers or the judicial system, but because a journalism class at Northwestern took it on as a class project to see whether or not these people were guilty or not. You know, if those students had taken chemistry that semester, these folks would have been executed.”

This quote really caught my ear when I first heard it. It is amazing that students in a journalism class who didn’t know much about the topic were assigned to reenact the case. It is unbelievable that they were the ones to actually prove a prisoner who was on death row for sixteen years. This really shows a loophole in the process of the death penalty. How can somebody who is innocent for that long not be taken off death row sooner? This quote really shows that there might be a problem with our legal system when it comes to capital punishment.