Wrongful Death News

New Study Finds that Race and Place Play a Key Role in Death Sentence in California

SAN FRANCISCO - Only weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court is to issue its decisions in three California death penalty cases involving an African-American, a Latino and a Native American man, the first statewide study examining how race, ethnicity, and geography affect death sentencing in California has been made public.

The study, entitled “The Impact of Legally Inappropriate Factors on Death Sentencing for California Homicides, 1990-99” (forthcoming, Santa Clara Law Review Vol 46), concludes that the race and ethnicity of the victim and the location of the crime play a critical role in determining who will be sentenced to death. Study authors, Glenn Pierce, of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, and Michael Radelet, Sociology Professor at the University of Colorado, examined all California homicides committed between January 1, 1990, and December 31, 1999, using data from the FBI and the California Office of Vital Statistics, as well as other sources.

“This study forces the people in California to confront the unfairness of how the death penalty is applied in this state,” said Ellen Kreitzberg, Professor of Law at Santa Clara University and Director of the Death Penalty College. “The decision of who will live and who will die in California turns on arbitrary and unlawful factors such as the race and ethnicity of the murder victim or the location where the murder was committed.”

Key findings of the study include:

• 80% of executions in California were for those convicted of killing whites, while only 27.6% of murder victims are white.
• Those who murder whites are over four times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill Latinos and over three times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill African-Americans.
• A person convicted of 1st degree murder in a predominantly white, rural county (like Napa, King, Colusa, or Shasta counties) is more than three times as likely to be sentenced to death than a person convicted of a similar crime in a diverse, urban county like Los Angeles, which has the highest number of homicides in the state.
• The death rate by homicide in California varies substantially by race. African- Americans are six times more likely to be murdered than whites.
  

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	Did You Know?
	Family members can file a wrongful death suit. This depends on individual state law, but in general the immediate family members (spouses, children and parents) can file a wrongful death claim. Some states allow grandparents, legal dependants and extended family members to file.