Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2024
Abstract
The specter of racial bias in the federal government's administration of the death penalty over the past thirty-five years has been long apparent yet insufficiently scrutinized. Scholars have studied the racially disparate application of capital punishment at the state level and linked those disparities to a history of racialized violence. The federal death penalty, especially with regard to the impact of race, however, remains largely unexamined.
It is time to bridge this gap in the research on racial bias in the criminal justice system and in the implementation of the federal death penalty specifically. There are, as this Article sets forth, troubling indicia of the continuing influence of race in the federal death penalty system that require further investigation. These include entrenched racial disparities in its current application, policies and practices adopted by federal officials that reinforce the disparities, and emerging evidence of racial bias in the historical development of the federal death penalty in the wake of the Civil War. This Article calls for an in-depth-and long overdue-examination of the issue.
Publication Title
Howard Law Journal
Volume
67
Issue
2
Article Number
1163
First Page
225
Last Page
248
Suggested Bluebook Citation
John Nidiry & Ruth Friedman, Long Overdue: The Need for an Examination of the Specter of Racial Bias in the Federal Death Penalty System, 67 HOWARD L.J. 225 (2024).