Report: Death penalty cases show history of racial disparity

 Black people have been overrepresented on death rows across United States and killers of Black people are less likely to face death penalty than people who kill white people, a new report found.

report from Death Penalty Information Center is a history lesson in how lynchings and executions have been used in America and how discrimination bleeds into entire criminal justice system. It traces a line from lynchings of old — killings outside law — where Black people were killed in an effort to assert social control during slavery and Jim Crow, and how that eventually translated into state-ordered executions.

It comes as U.S. grapples with criminal justice and police reform following George Floyd's death and deaths of or Black people at hands of police and in wake of mass protest. Across country, 30 states have death penalty but executions occur mostly in Sourn states.

And federal government this year began carrying out executions again after a 17-year hiatus despite waning public support for death penalty. center, a think tank that studies both state and federal capital cases, wrote that capital punishment must be included in discussion of past.

“I think what data tells us and what history tells us is that y’re all part of same phemen. death penalty in inextricably linked to our history of slavery, of lynching, and Jim Crow segregation and we wanted to put what is happening today in its appropriate context,” said Robert Dunham, he of center.

report found that throughout modern era , people of color have been overrepresented on death row — in 2019, 52% of death row inmates were Black, but that number has dropped to 42% this year, when approximately 60% of population is white. But it also showed that killers of white people were more likely than killers of Black people to face death penalty, and cases with white victims were more likely to be investigated.

Since death penalty resumed in 1977, 295 Black defendants were executed for killing a white victim, but only 21 white defendants were executed for killing of a Black victim even though Black people are disproportionately victims of crime.

“If you’re thinking about Black victims of crime, y are more likely to be victims of homicide, but we've created this system where Black victims of crime are less likely to get services y need, clearance rate for those crimes is much lower,” said Ngozi Ndulue, author of study. “Inste what we have is what is seen as 'worst of worst’ being executed, and that means in many cases person killed was white."

report also details several case studies in which race may be playing a role today, including a man named Pervis Payne, accused of 1987 stabbing deaths of Charisse Christopher and her 2-year-old daughter, Lacie Jo. Payne told police he was at Christopher’s apartment building in Millington, Tennessee, to meet his girlfriend when he saw a man in bloody clos run past him. Payne, who is African American, has said he found and tried to help victims, who were white, but panicked when he saw a white policeman and ran away.

Payne is sentenced to die Dec. 3, but he has asked a judge to order DNA testing. At time of his trial, DNA testing of evidence was unavailable, and testing has ever been done in his case. A request for DNA testing, in 2006, was refused based on a Tennessee Supreme Court ruling that has since been overturned.

His recent petition said police focused almost exclusively on him as a suspect, although thing in his history suggested he would commit such a crime. He was a minister’s son who never caused problems eir as a child or a teenr.

But prosecutors alleged Payne was high on cocaine and looking for sex when he killed Christopher and her daughter in a “drug-induced frenzy.” town of Millington is in Shelby County, which has most death sentences and lynchings of any county in state.

report also takes aim at federal government's scheduling of executions. first set were all white men, a move critics argue was a political calculation to avoid uproar. federal death penalty suffers same racial bias, according to report. Of 57 people on federal death row, 34 are people of color, including 26 Black men, some convicted by all-white juries, report found.

Christopher Vialva, first Black inmate on federal death row set to die this year, is scheduled to be executed next week.