Americans are unfortunately accustomed to seeing some degree of racial disparity in the criminal justice system. But when we look at the death penalty, as I did in my study “The Impact of Race, Gender and Geography on Missouri Executions,” disparities are taken to a level that should shock the consciousness of any American.
Very few homicides eventually result in the killer being executed. In Missouri, in the “modern” period (since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, with safeguards against its arbitrary and capricious use, in 1976), more than 11,000 Missourians have been victims of homicide, but the number of executions from 1977 through 2014 is 80. The rate of executions per 100 homicides state-wide is therefore 0.7 percent.
In St. Louis city, however, where almost 4,500 homicides have occurred, the rate of executions per homicide is just 0.18. In St. Louis County, where there have been about 1,000 homicides, there have been 23 executions, giving a rate of 2.3 percent: more than 10 times higher than within the city limits.
Most counties in the state have never seen an execution, but just four jurisdictions (out of 93) have accounted for a majority of the executions in the entire state.
Geographic disparities are huge, but the truly astounding numbers relate to the race and gender of the victim.
Whereas crimes with black male victims constitute 52 percent of all Missouri homicides, just 12 percent of the victims in execution cases were black males. White females represent just 12 percent of all homicide victims, but they are 37 percent of those where the killer was later executed. Whites in general represent just 36 percent of the homicide victims, but 81 percent of the victims in cases associated with executions.
To put it in its starkest terms, the odds of execution for a killer of a black male are 0.22 percent, but they are 1.74 for killers of white males and 3.01 for killers of White females (they are 0.67 where the victim is a black female). In other words, the odds of execution for killers of white females are 14 times greater than those whose victims are black males.
With black males constituting the majority of all homicide victims, it is clear that the Missouri death penalty is certainly not designed to protect those lives. Apparently, those particular lives just don’t matter as much as other ones do.
We can quibble about racial disparities that are measured by a few percentage points. But the results of my study are not like that. These are stark results with effects measured by orders of magnitude. They clearly show that Missouri’s death penalty system is plagued by vast racial and geographic disparities.
They demonstrate that, in the application of the ultimate punishment, the state cannot, or in any case does not, treat all of its citizens fairly and impartially. This is particularly troubling given that Missouri tied Texas last year in carrying out the most executions of any state in the country.
The scope of geographic bias, and particularly the racial inequities that are reflected in this comprehensive assessment of all Missouri executions in the modern period, should give all Missourians pause. A system that is so arbitrary, so capricious, and tainted by astounding levels of racial disparities should be abandoned.
Missouri had 10 executions in 2014, and five so far in 2015, marking a sharp increase in its use of capital punishment. Other states, by contrast, have been moving away from the death penalty or abolishing it altogether.
Missouri should recognize that its death penalty system is capricious with respect to geography and biased with respect to race. These troubling facts about the death penalty in Missouri suggest that it has sorely failed the people and should be abandoned.
Frank R. Baumgartner is the Richard J. Richardson Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of “The Impact of Race, Gender and Geography on Missouri Executions,” released July 16.
