Status Disparities in the Capital of Capital Punishment

Abstract

Numerous studies have examined the influence of victim race on capital punishment, with a smaller number focused on victim gender. But death penalty scholars have largely ignored victim social status. Drawing on Black's (1976) multidimensional theoretical concept, the current research examines the impact of victim social status on the district attorney's decision to seek the death penalty and the jury's decision to impose a death sentence. The data include the population of cases indicted for capital murder in Harris County (Houston), Texas, from 1992 to 1999 (n=504). The findings suggest that victim social status has a robust influence on the ultimate state sanction: Death was more likely to be sought and imposed on behalf of high‐status victims who were integrated, sophisticated, conventional, and respectable. The research also has implications beyond capital punishment. Because victim social status has rarely been investigated in the broader sentencing literature, Black's concept provides a theoretical tool that could be used to address such an important omission.

The Behavior of Law: A Theoretical Integration

“…Hence, for example, the degree to which legal responses to homicide along with popular judgments of those accused (and their victims) will vary, depending on the location of those homicides in social space [37]. And the greater the composite array of multiple status advantages, the more pronounced and definitive will be the judgments [38]. Likewise, greater gaps or social distances between disputants in terms of their relative statuses will have measurable effects upon the nature of normative evaluations that occur, either in a more or less favorable direction.…”

Criminology as social control: discriminatory research & its role in the reproduction of social inequalities and crime

“…Stated differently, Black's theory predicts that holding constant involvement in a particular criminal action (e.g., burglary or murder), the amount of law that punishes that action varies inversely with the vertical, radial, corporate, symbolic, and normative status of the offender. Extant research provides support for the idea that low-status persons are the most likely to be arrested, prosecuted, and punished for their crimes (see, among many others, [4,21,33,37,39]). …”

Right or Wrong? Toward a Theory of IRBs’ (Dis)Approval of Research

“…5 This theory predicts, for instance, that an offender who is rich, employed, married, college educated, belongs to the racial/ethnic majority, and does not have a criminal record will be punished less for a crime than is an offender who is poor, unmarried, unemployed, uneducated, belongs to a racial/ethnic minority, and possesses an extensive criminal record. The theory also predicts that crimes against victims who are relatively high in social status will be punished more harshly by the government (for empirical evidence, see Beckett, Nyrop, and Pfingst 2006;Pettit and Western 2004;Phillips, 2009). …”