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Earl Ofari Hutchinson
The moment Attorney General John Ashcroft delayed the execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh due to FBI bungling, McVeigh's chief attorney, Robert Nigh demanded a moratorium on all federal executions. If anyone pays the slightest attention to his demand they will find that most of those executed or awaiting execution are not whites such as McVeigh, but mostly poor blacks, Latinos, and Native-Americans. The gaping racial warp in federal executions far surpasses those even in state executions. Whites make-up about three-quarters of those sentenced for federal crimes. Yet nearly as many blacks as whites have been executed by the federal government. Latinos and Native-Americans have also made up a disproportionate percentage of those executed. The racial disparities in the federal death penalty have gotten even worse in the last decade. A federal study last September found the federal death penalty deeply riddled with racial bias. Blacks and Latinos make-up more than three-quarters of those slapped with federal death sentences.
The glaring racial bias is due to a troubling mix of laws, media sensationalism, and racism. In 1988, President Reagan and Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, popularly labeled the "Drug Kingpin act" to quiet public panic over the rash of inner-city turf battles over drug sales. This was supposed to nail big time drug lords. It hasn't. While the overwhelming majority of those convicted of drug sales are white, most of those condemned to death are black. In 1994, Clinton and Congress passed the Omnibus Federal Crime Bill again to quiet public panic over the rash of car jacking, drive by shootings, and organized drug sales. The bill contained sixty new provisions for the death penalty. Again, most of those convicted under those provisions have been black and Latino.
When the federal study was released then Attorney General Janet Reno public fretted over the racial disparities in the death penalty. Yet during Clinton's first term she approved 10 death penalty prosecutions. All were blacks. The determination of who gets the death penalty and who plea bargains is not totally based on the severity of the crimes. In several cases lower-level black, and Latino drug dealers received the death penalty for murders while their bosses who ordered the hits received lesser sentences. Last September, Clinton gave convicted murderer Juan Raul Garza a reprieve in order to use revised Justice Department procedures to appeal for presidential clemency. The chances that Bush will grant clemency to him or the other condemned men currently sitting on federal death row are virtually nil. Ashcroft has publicly stated that he will not extend Clinton's moratorium on the death penalty.
Though the death penalty whether carried out by the Feds or the states does not deter murder and mayhem and is permeated with endless examples of farcical legal abuses, most Americans aren't ready to dump it. They toss reason and logic out the window when it comes to the fear of violent crime. That fear is fueled by high-profile shooting rampages, and a crime-gorged media that stuffs the public with mega-doses of crime and violence stories. The passage of hyper-punitive laws and cynical politicians who pander to crime fears to get votes has also erected a hard edged public callousness and indifference to executions. This makes it easy for many to brand those who murder or are accused of murder as low-life, scum, strip them of any human value, and chalk up their state-sanctioned murder as a case of them getting their just desert. This dehumanizing impulse toward the condemned fuels the circus atmosphere around McVeigh's still pending execution. But morbid public fascination and fear is only part of the reason the death penalty won't go away. The other reason is race. The media- overkill on stories of marauding black and Latino youths in New York City, black rioters in Cincinnati, drive-by-shootings and gang violence in inner-city neighborhoods stoke the ancient racist stereotypes of blacks and Latinos as eternal menaces to society. This reinforces white fears that they are in perpetual danger of being mugged or murdered by rampaging blacks and Latinos. The death penalty for many seems like a necessary, even reasonable, weapon against blacks and Latinos accused of or who commit violent acts against whites. Nearly every study on the grotesque racial disparities in the death penalty confirm that a black or Latino is far more likely to get the death penalty when their victim is white.
Whether McVeigh is executed in June, or later pending possible appeals, it likely won't do much to stop the flood gates from opening on federal executions. The difference is that those who will face the executioner will be mostly blacks and Latinos, and they won't be transformed by a fawning media and fearful public into celebrity anti-heroes.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is the President of The National Alliance for Positive Action website www.natalliance.org and the author of The Disappearance of Black Leadership. email:ehutchi344@aol.com
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