Race and Prosecutorial Discretion in Homicide Cases

Abstract

This paper examines the cases of 1017 homicide defendants in Florida. Two main data sources are used: the police department's classification of the case, as found in the FBI's Supplemental Homicide Reports, and the prosecutor's classification, as determined by court records. Each data set characterizes the homicide as involving felonious circumstances, possible felonious circumstances, or nonfelonious circumstances. Attention is focused on cases that differ in their police and prosecutorial classifications. Results indicate that differences in these classifications are related to defendant's and victim's race, with blacks accused of killing whites the most likely to be “upgraded” and the least likely to be “downgraded.” The process of upgrading is then shown to significantly increase the likelihood of the imposition of a death sentence in cases with white victims where no plea bargain is offered.

The enduring racial divide in death penalty support

“…Lower levels of support for capital punishment may simply be symptomatic of a much larger and more serious problem, a crisis of legitimacy, which also needs the attention of the scholarly community. It was important to note that the jury pool surveys were conducted in a death penalty state, Florida, for which past research had established evidence of racial disparities in the administration of capital sentencing (Radelet, 1981;Radelet & Pierce, 1985). In addition, the first jury pool survey was administered in a metropolitan area that several months previously had experienced a significant race riot instigated by a police shooting of a young, Black male (Roche & Davy, 1999).…”

Victim's perceptions of initial police responses to robbery and aggravated assault: Does race matter?

“…To date, there has been a proliferation of research performed to determine the extent to which race affects the imposition of the law in the United States. However, despite the fact that police officers are usually the first persons within the criminal justice system to respond to a criminal victimization, the majority of this research has been devoted to delineating the effects of race on adjudication outcomes which occur after initial police interventions such as conviction decisions or sentence outcomes (Baily, 1981;Baldus et al, 1983Baldus et al, , 1990Bowers and Pierce, 1980;D'Alessio and Stolzenberg, 1993;Kleck, 1981;Hagan, 1974;LaFree, 1980;Liska et aL, 1985;Lizotte, 1978;Paternoster, 1983Paternoster, , 1984Peterson and ttagan 1984;Radelet and Pierce, 1985;Wolfgang and Riedel, 1973). Very little empirical effort has been devoted to examining the effects of race on the earlier stages of the criminal justice process, namely on initial police reJponses to a reported victimization (Berk and Loseke, 1981;Black, 1971;Black and Reiss, 1970;Smith, 1987;Smith and Klein, 1984;Smith and Visher, 1981 ;.…”

Prejudice in a simulated legal context: A further application of social identity theory

“…has not been employed is the legal domain. Experimental social psychological research has addressed social inequalities, particularly racial bias, within the justice system (Bullock, 1961;Field, 1979;Radelet and Pierce, 1985). Although decidedly atheoretical in logic and purpose, the examination of racial bias in the applied psycholegal research sphere would appear to be a most suitable area to conduct a more ecologically valid investigation of S.I.T.…”