McCleskey v. Kemp Essays

McCleskey v. Kemp Essays McCleskey v. Kemp Paper McCleskey v. Kemp Paper CRJ 150 McCleskey v. Kemp The case began with Warren McCleskey, an African-American man who was sentenced to death in 1978 for killing a white police officer during the robbery of a Georgia furniture store. McCleskey appealed his conviction and sentence, relying on the Eighth Amendments ban on cruel and unusual punishment and the Fourteenth Amendments guarantee of Equal Protection to argue that the death penalty in Georgia was administered in a racially discriminatory and therefore unconstitutionalmanner. Jack Boger, then director of LDFs Capital Punishment Project, argued the case before the Supreme Court on Mr. McCleskeys behalf. Joining him on the briefs were Julius Chambers, James Nabrit Ill, Anthony G. Amsterdam, Deval Patrick, Robert Stroup, Vivian Berger, and Timothy Ford. In support of McCleskeys argument, LDF presented the United States Supreme Court with strong statistical evidence showing that race played a pivotal role in the Georgia capital punishment system. LDF introduced a landmark study by Professor David Baldus, who examined over 2,000 Georgia murder cases. Baldus concluded that in capital ases, the race of the defendant and victim determined who was sentenced to death. Specifically, Professor Baldus found that that African-Americans were more likely to receive a death sentence than any other defendants, and that African- American defendants who killed white victims were the most likely to be sentenced to death. His findings indicated that racial bias permeated the Georgia capital punishment system. Although the evidence presented by LDF gave the Court the opportunity to acknowledge and renounce the arbitrary influence of race on the dministration of the death penalty, the Court found no constitutional error in a system where African-Americans and whites were treated unequally. In a 5-4 decision authored by Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr. , the Court ruled against McCleskey and found that unless he could submit evidence showing that a specific person in his case acted with a racially discriminatory purpose, McCleskeys death sentence and the stark racial disparities in Georgias capital punishment system would stand. In this specific case I do not think that race played a role in the sentencing that McCleskey had gotten. The common punishment for people who kill police officers is a death sentence. Although, I do believe that the minority groups get treated much worse than whites. Statistics reveal that blacks are found to be suspicious more often than whites are. This suspicion leads to minorities being stopped to be searched, ticketed and arrested more often than whites. This could also be due to the fact that minorities tend to be in areas where more police officers on patrol, and therefore the police will be more likely to notice any violations that these minorities commit. It is very clear that people of color get arrested at a much higher rate than whites and they are more likely to receive capital punishment according to the Baldus Study. It does not seem very fair because blacks make up twelve percent of the U. S. population, yet they amount to 44 percent of sentenced inmates, which makes them the largest group behind bars. I know that most people think that blacks are very bad people in general and that they commit much more crimes than people in other groups, but this is most likely because of a low economic class. In poor areas people re less educated and are more prone to committing crimes, if they are constantly surrounded by this bad behavior and they have little to no guidance from their parents, then they are likely to follow in the wrong path. Statistics also say that one in three African-American males will be imprisoned at some point in the lives. That number seems to be outrageously large to me. It does not sound right that people of color commit the most crimes. Minorities are called minorities for a reason, so it absolutely blows my mind how such a small percentage of people get charged at uch a high rate. A few studies also show that black defendants get harsher sentences when their victims are white, and that whites get lesser sentences for the same crimes. It is evident that our world is not perfect and that people are biased, and not everyone gets treated equally, but that is part of life, which everyone knows to be unfair and there is nothing anyone can do to change that. Over the past few decades we have become more diverse but some people will always be favored more than others. Maybe if the current minority groups become the majority, and the majority ecomes the minority, things might be the other way around. No matter what race or ethnicity, killing someone is a serious crime, especially if they happen to be a police officer. I think that everyone should get charged the same way for the same crime no matter what they happen to look like. I was under the impression that our systems were supposed to treat individuals as equals. I do believe that if a white man committed the same crime as McCleskey, that his sentencing would be the same because crimes committed against officers are taken very seriously because the eople who protect and served must also be protected to a higher degree because they are big targets. Therefore a death sentences for cop killers may be an effective of protection for police because people might think twice before shooting and killing a cop. In my opinion it does not make a difference if the Jury did not like Mr. Mcleskey due to the fact that he was a colored man, because I feel as if he got the punishment that any person should get for a crime such as that one. Bibliography naacpldf. org/case/mccleskey-v-kemp