NCJ Number
171497
Journal
Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review Volume: 30 Issue: 2 Dated: (Summer 1995) Pages: 543-576
Date Published
1995
Length
34 pages
Annotation
This Note concerns proposals to combat racial bias in capital sentencing.
Abstract
The Note assumes that there is racial discrimination in capital sentencing, an assumption based largely on a General Accounting Office study. The Note provides background on McCleskey v. Kemp, in which the US Supreme Court declined to adopt a judicially crafted remedy for race discrimination in capital sentencing, instead leaving the task of reform to State and Federal legislatures. The Note also discusses Congress's response to McCleskey: The Racial Justice Act. The Act was introduced in several different versions in both houses of Congress but was never enacted. It would have allowed petitioners to do exactly what the Court in McCleskey determined was not provided for by the Constitution: use statistical evidence of racial discrimination to block execution of a death sentence. The Note defends the approach taken by the Racial Justice Act, with respect to both the process of statistical proof and the remedy of barring executions, and proposes revisions and additions to the Act to make it a more appealing and plausible reform that could be adopted by the States or by Congress. Notes