All Murder Victims are Not Equal
originally posted by Suzanne Ito, ACLU for Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union [click here]
Mar 9th
Yesterday, UPI reported on a new study by Scott Phillips, associate professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Denver. Professor Phillips analyzed data from 504 death penalty cases in Harris County, Texas, between 1992 and 1999, and found:
the probability of being sentenced to death is much greater if a defendant kills a white or Hispanic victim who is married with a clean criminal record and a college degree, as opposed to a black or Asian victim who is single with a prior criminal record and no college degree.
While Professor Phillips’ research was limited to Texas, this mirrors a national trend, as the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project’s Brian Stull wrote last year:
Nationally, studies consistently demonstrate that, everything else being equal, a defendant is approximately four times more likely to get the death penalty for killing a white person than for a black person. The racial configuration by far the more likely to result in a death sentence is a black defendant and a white victim. Studies of jurors from across various death penalty states demonstrate that in "black on white" murder cases with six or more white male jurors, juries issue a death sentence 78.3 percent of the time. But if three or more jurors were black males, the overproduction of death sentences disappears.
This problem is exacerbated by the fact that there are likely many innocent men on death row. Brian points to the case of ACLU client Levon "Bo" Jones, was exonerated in 2008 after 14 years on North Carolina’s death row. Jones, who is African-American, was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury.
h/t: StandDown
Wide Cast of Characters Discuss the Benefits of Legalization
originally posted by Travis Packer for Immigration Impact [click here]
Mar 9th
While comprehensive immigration reform (CIR) remains stalled somewhere between the House, Senate, and the Administration, four noted experts were interviewed by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) about how immigration reform would affect the U.S. economy. These interviews were posted on CFR’s website yesterday. David Scott Fitzgerald, Associate Director for the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego; Heidi Shierholz, an economist for the Economic Policy Institute; Mark Krikorian, Executive Director for the Center for Immigration Studies; and James Carafano, Director for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation offered opinions on immigration and the economy. While their opinions varied widely, there were notable areas of agreement: our system is in need of repair, and legalization would not be the great harm to our economy that restrictionists tout.
So how would mass legalization affect the U.S. economy overall?
According to Fitzgerald, the effect would be positive, as legalized immigrants would start paying federal income and payroll taxes. These taxes would offset any social welfare costs becoming available like unemployment insurance, Social Security, and Medicare. In the end, Fitzgerald hypothesizes that CIR would result in a “slight net fiscal benefit and slightly higher economic growth.” Meanwhile, economist Heidi Shierholz points out that while new immigrant workers would add to our labor supply, they would also be steady consumers of goods and services as well as create more jobs. Furthermore, Shierholz predicts that immigration actually boosts wages for native-born workers at all levels of education—including those without a high school diploma.
We might expect to hear the exact opposite from the other two participants. However, Krikorian, a long time immigration restrictionist opposed to any type of legalization, actually agreed that a legalization program would help make the economy bigger. Carafano, another restrictionist, states that legalization would “probably be a ‘wash’ on the U.S. economy,” but admits that “there might be some modest benefits gained in recouping some taxes, imposing some penalties, and avoiding the cost of detention and holding immigration hearings.” However, as expected, Krikorian and Carafano peddle back their legalization comments with the typical restrictionist qualification that the economic benefits of legalization would be wiped out by the costs of implementation and access to social services.
But wait a minute, if everyone agrees that legalization is good—or at least not bad—for the economy, why aren’t we all supporting legalization?
While many disagree on how to go about it, most advocates and policymakers on both sides of the spectrum agree that something needs to be done with our current broken immigration system. Even noted immigration restrictionists like Krikorian and Carafano struggle to deny that CIR will benefit our economy. Of course, immigrant advocates and restrictionists are going to continue to disagree on the solution to the immigration problem. But Congress and the Administration should take note of recent research and analysis on the economic benefits of immigration reform and use it to push forward with finding a solution.
Photo by Visual Dichotomy
Executing on a Technicality
originally posted by Brian Stull, Capital Punishment Project for Blog of Rights: Official Blog of the American Civil Liberties Union [click here]
Mar 9th
When a person accused of a crime goes free, we often hear the refrain, "He got off on a technicality." In reality, these technicalities often involve a violation of a person’s constitutional rights. In the case of Holland v. Florida, argued before the Supreme Court last week, a technicality may determine whether Albert Holland lives or dies.
In the Holland case, the court will decide a technical question about the rules that govern federal habeas corpus review, which is a federal court appeal of a death sentence handed down in state court. A federal habeas corpus review assesses a case for violations of the U.S. Constitution. Every death-sentenced defendant has the right to this review, and it’s crucial, because studies show (PDF) that in 37 percent of cases, federal courts throw out death sentences after finding serious constitutional violations.
The first thing to know about federal habeas corpus review is that there are many complexities to filing a petition. There are rules about precisely when, where, and how a federal constitutional claim must be raised in the state courts. And those rules are also bound by Supreme Court case law and federal law. If a lawyer violates any of these rules, the client risks execution even if his death sentence violates the federal constitution.
One such rule took Albert Holland to the Supreme Court. Albert Holland was assigned an attorney by the State of Florida to appeal his death sentence (also known as a "capital appeal"). Florida has a statute saying attorneys assigned in such cases must be "competent." But Holland’s appointed attorney was far from competent: despite Holland’s repeated requests to his attorney to file the petition and keep him updated on the status of his case, his attorney failed to file the petition in a timely manner, prompting the federal district court to dismiss the petition without deciding its merits. Holland even attempted to have the attorney removed from his case because he appeared to be incompetent and unconcerned, and Holland made every possible effort to obtain necessary information about his case so that he could file the petition himself.
In the Supreme Court, Holland argued that he should not forfeit his right to federal review based on his attorney’s gross negligence. We supported his argument with a friend-of-the-court brief demonstrating that the deadline should be forgiven in certain narrow circumstances. But this case presents a more basic question of fairness: why should a death-sentenced inmate who does everything he possibly can to follow these complex rules, lose his life due to the gross negligence of an attorney assigned by the state? At Thursday’s oral argument (PDF), the lawyer representing the State of Florida suggested that only in instances of "extreme attorney incompetence" should missing the federal deadline be forgiven. This suggestion prompted Chief Justice Roberts to ask, "[W]hy isn’t it extreme attorney incompetence to miss a deadline?"
For Albert Holland, much hangs on how the court answers the Chief Justice’s question. Whether a federal court ever rules on the merits of his constitutional arguments against his death sentence should not depend on a technicality. We can only hope the Supreme Court agrees.
It’s Official: Women of Color Feel Impact of Racial Wealth Gap The Worst
originally posted by Julianne Hing for RaceWire [click here]
Mar 9th
Click to enlarge.
It always helps to have research to confirm what you already know about racial inequity in America. But occasionally, even when the news is not new, the findings turn out to be appallingly dire, shocking even to the sensibilities of cynical people who find it hard to be surprised anymore. (That would be this blogger.)
Such is the case with the latest report on women of color and the racial wealth gap from the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, released yesterday, on International Women’s Day.
Take a look at a few choice findings from “Lifting As We Climb: Women of Color, Wealth and America’s Future“:
-Single Black women (across all ages, from age 18 to 64) have a median wealth of $100 and single Latinas have a median wealth of $120. Single white women clock in at $41,000.
-Almost half of all Black women and Latinas have zero wealth or negative wealth. That is, their debts exceed their assets.
-Young women (aged 18 to 35) of all races have a median wealth of zero.
-And even though white women (from 36 to 49 years old) have a median wealth of $42,600, women of color in the same age bracket have a median wealth valued at $5.
-Women of color 65 and older are least likely to receive retirement income from pensions or other assets.
When it comes to every kind of financial asset that people can call their own–cash, bank accounts to actually hold their cash in, homes, stocks, bonds and businesses–women of color have less. Across the board, for every kind of financial asset, at every age and no matter whether they’re single, married or divorced. Women of color have less than their white female counterparts. Less than their Black and Latino male counterparts, who still retain more wealth than white females. But each of these groups’ wealth is trumped by the wealth that white men at every age bracket own.
And this is where, I know, we all start saying: what else is new?
But the findings are an important avenue for understanding exactly how financial inequality becomes institutionalized and entrenched. Insight Center folks take a particular interest in wealth–defined as net worth, “the total value of one’s assets minus debts”–as an indicator of financial stability in communities because wealth (and the racial disparities that accompany it) are transferred from one generation to the next.
And it’s their savings and assets that people turn to when they’ve lost their jobs, when their kids get sick, when the car needs repairing, when bills need to get paid. Wealth is a measure of how well we can sustain ourselves through the lean times, or whether or not communities are able to sustain themselves at all.
The racial and gender wealth gap is persistent and severe for women of color. We need new policy to deal with the burden of institutionalized inequity. I like Insight’s suggestions, which include:
-Better data collection that is disaggregated by race, gender and ethnicity. Most data available for Asian Americans obscures the complexity of the Asian American experience, and even less information is available about Native Americans and Middle Easterners.
-Support for the Employee Free Choice Act
-Eliminate asset limit clauses that bar people from being eligible for public assistance, or else public assistance will only keep people of color, and especially women of color, from achieving financial security.
-Institute minimum benefits for Social Security.
Vanessa Williams Explains Hollywood White Knight Syndrome to Barbara Walters
originally posted by Jorge Rivas for RaceWire [click here]
Mar 9th
Wilhelmina Slater Vanessa Williams was on Barbara Walter’s “The View” yesterday and she came so close to having a teachable moment with Barbara!
Williams talked about “The Blind Side” and Hollywood’s obsession with white characters saving people of color but was interrupted by Walters talking gibberish, “[The Blind Side] was a wonderful story, and it was a story of closeness between two races,” she said.
Vanessa Williams should’ve said “yes, Barbara, but can you name a movie where Black people saved white people?”
