Over at Stop the ACLU, they blog that a study has found that Blacks get the death penalty much more often than whites.
In the United States, blacks convicted of killing whites are not only more likely than other killers to get a death sentencethey’re also likelier to actually be executed, a new study suggests. The chances of being condemned and of being put to death are quite different, as “less than 10 percent of those given the death sentence ever get executed,” said David Jacobs, coauthor of the study. Most of the others have their sentences overturned on appeal, he explained.
The new finding “suggests our justice system places greater value on white lives, even after sentences are handed down,” added Jacobs, a sociologist at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. This apparently is the first study to examine whether the race of murder victims affects the probability that a convicted killer gets the ultimate punishment, Jacobs said.
The findings appear in the August issue of the research journal American Sociological Review. The study examined outcomes of 1,560 people sentenced to death in 16 states from 1973 to 2002. These 16 states were chosen because they had the complete data that the researchers needed for the study.
A black who killed a white person has twice the risk of being executed than a white person who killed a nonwhite, he said. “The fact that blacks who kill nonwhites actually are less likely to be executed than blacks who kill whites shows there is a strong racial bias here,” Jacobs said. “Blacks are most likely to pay the ultimate price when their victims are white.”
Except for one thing…
Q. [Did the disparities reflect] the nature of the crime? Or was it simply race?
A. We don’t have much data on the nature of the crime. But Supreme Court regulations require a state to come up with aggravating and mitigating factors for capital cases. Aggravating factors might include, say, the killing of a child or torturing a victim. Mitigating factors might include the age of the offender or their childhood experience, whether they were abused, etc.
Translation: I couldn’t be bothered doing actual research, so I just wrote up my biases and called that research.
So another stupid researcher puts another “fact” on the pile. Undoubtedly this’ll end up on the lefty blogs in the next few days as yet another example of American/right wing racism.
While there is plenty to criticize on the right, there is far less than most on the left would have you believe. Unfortunately, you have to see through the fake research, the easy slogans, (and when all those fail, conspiracy theories) on the left to understand this. That’ exactly why they say “If a young man is not a socialist, he hasn’t thought. An old man who is still a socialist, still hasn’t thought.
Keep thinking.
Something should go here, maybe later. 