ABSTRACT
However, the issue of whether African Americans are punished more severely than are white Americans by the criminal justice system and whether the system is racist has been fi ercely debated in the literature for decades (Cole, 1999; Tonry, 1996). On one hand, some criminal justice professionals have called the charge of a racist criminal justice system a myth or have stated that the evidence is mixed. However, other professionals assert that the U.S. criminal justice system indeed is racist, and this racism traces itself back to the dehumanization of African Americans during the era of slavery and the following period during which systematic segregation was practiced. (Nunn, 1997). Many researchers regrettably conclude that de facto racial discrimination in capital sentencing on the basis of the race of the victim is legal in the U.S. Moreover, they suggest that regardless of the elegance of statistical manipulation and causal inference, such racial discrimination will no doubt remain legal, given the public and the courts’ interest in stiffer penalties, including the death penalty.
