In the context of the death penalty, racial disparities have been evident for generations. Black people have suffered from unfair treatment as alleged perpetrators and victims of capital crimes. Since the Civil War, blacks suffered a lengthy era in which legal lynchings were in the South. With such a rough history, it is unsurprising that the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund choose to led the campaign against the death penalty in the 1960s and 1970s. What is surprising, however, is the Supreme Court’s avoidance of the race issue in constitutional cases. Despite the obviousness of racial discrimination in many court cases, the Court consistently avoided direct engagement with the issue of racial discrimination in capital punishment. This claim that the death penalty is administered by a systematically racist state institution was at the center of Furman v. Georgia. When the Supreme Court struck down on all state death penalty punishments. Above both the moral and constitutional reasonings for this case stood the contention that the death penalty was racially prejudice in its
In the context of the death penalty, racial disparities have been evident for generations. Black people have suffered from unfair treatment as alleged perpetrators and victims of capital crimes. Since the Civil War, blacks suffered a lengthy era in which legal lynchings were in the South. With such a rough history, it is unsurprising that the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund choose to led the campaign against the death penalty in the 1960s and 1970s. What is surprising, however, is the Supreme Court’s avoidance of the race issue in constitutional cases. Despite the obviousness of racial discrimination in many court cases, the Court consistently avoided direct engagement with the issue of racial discrimination in capital punishment. This claim that the death penalty is administered by a systematically racist state institution was at the center of Furman v. Georgia. When the Supreme Court struck down on all state death penalty punishments. Above both the moral and constitutional reasonings for this case stood the contention that the death penalty was racially prejudice in its