Punishment and Discrimination

Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen

All kinds of punishment can be discriminatory, but for capital punishment the charge of discrimination has played a central role in arguments for its abolishment. David Baldus concluded in a study that ‘the odds of a death sentence for those who kill whites in Georgia are 4.3 times higher than the odds of a death sentence for those who kill blacks’.1 In 1987 this work was used to challenge the execution of death row prisoner, Warren McClesky, in the Supreme Court on the grounds of an ‘unfair racial bias in the administration of the death penalty in Georgia’.2 The Supreme Court dismissed the argument, but the debate about how discrimination bears on the justifiability of punishment has continued. In 1997 the American Bar Association called for a moratorium on the death penalty partly because of ‘the continuing problem of racial bias in the administration’ of it.3