National Context
Capital punishment has been in the world of crimes and justice for centuries. Capital punishment is often referred to as the death penalty and is an issue in the United States where it is both seen as a good and bad consequence for perpetrators of heinous crimes. The first known time that this method was used in the Unites States goes back to 1608 in Jamestown (Shirelle Phelps and Jeffrey Lehman, Gale 2005). It was used during the revolutionary war period where prisoners of war or traitors were captured and killed. The first execution in America was done to a spy named Captain George Kendall in Jamestown for giving information to Spain and because the death penalty had almost no regulations and people were being executed for minor crimes, it was seen as a way to punish and get rid of those who do not comply with the laws of society. (http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/part-i-history-death-penalty#early)
In 1983, a professor named David C. Baldus, who was a teacher at University of Iowa College of Law conducted a study on how racial bias has an effect on the death penalty system. In his study between 1973 and 1979, killers of color were 11 times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who were white killers (Professor David C. Baldus, 1983). These studies were made because people felt that there were unjust and discriminatory reasons why most prisoners of color were being sentenced to death while those who were not people of color didn’t have as high of a percentage for them being put up for execution.
If the death penalty is meant to justify the murders people commit, then all murderers and rapists should be sentenced to the death penalty not just most of the colored people. It is wrong enough that the death penalty is still used, but it’s worse that the U.S. can be so unfair and not be equal with this punishment to all criminals black, brown, or white. Between 1976 and 1995, 245 prisoners were sentenced to death and executed and 84 percent of those prisoners were colored people who had killed a white person. They had executed the majority of the murderers who had killed a white person and most of the prisoners left in the jail were white (Professor David Baldus, 1983).
Many people, officials, and government politicians could argue that these statistics could prove or not prove any racial bias happening or whether or not it is a factor in deciding who and who gets the death sentence from all the criminals. It strongly shows that it is not an equal and error free method that is used on how deciding the criminals sentencing.