Race and Retribution

The Human Rights Commission is holding hearings to study race and the criminal justice system. Not surprisingly, no one from the DA's office showed up.

by Gwen Shaffer

Evidence of racial bias is most evident in the faces of death row inmates, testified Robert Dunham, executive director for the Center for Legal Education, Advocacy and Defense Assistance.

On Tuesday, Philadelphia's daily headlines screamed out news that an African American man was sentenced to death for murdering a white woman, and a black teenager wrongly spent a year in prison for a rape he never committed.

That same morning, in a small room of a municipal office building, the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations (PCHR) held the first of two scheduled hearings that will examine race and the criminal justice system. The hearings were spurred by recent studies showing that Philadelphia sentences more African Americans to death than any other city and that blacks are disproportionately stopped by police when walking or driving through the city's streets.

The commissioners said that once the hearings are complete, they hope to "develop a resource" or make recommendations that will lead to greater fairness throughout the city's criminal justice system.

A diverse group of witnesses represented various perspectives, from the police department to public interest lawyers. The hearings are not intended to solve racial issues within the criminal justice system, pointed out Commission Chair Rev. James Allen.

"It is our hope that this hearing will help clarify and shed some additional light on the problem," he said.

The District Attorney's office conspicuously declined to testify. Instead, the office submitted a letter explaining that it does not compile statistics tracking the race of either defendants or victims. "Race, gender, sexual orientation, age, etc., play no role whatsoever in prosecutorial decisions or in the exercise of our prosecutorial discretion," reads a letter signed by DA Lynne Abraham.

Abraham created numerous enemies in the African American community earlier this year when she publicly spoke out against Frederica Massiah-Jackson, a black woman whom President Clinton had nominated for a federal judgeship. Ultimately, Jackson withdrew her name from consideration.

Anti-death penalty advocates are also highly-critical of Abraham, noting that death row is now crowded with 123 inmates from Philadelphia.

Race plays a significant role in the criminal justice system from the moment a person first makes contact with a police officer. According to statistics quoted by Philadelphia Police Inspector Jim Boyle, of the 16,493 arrests made so far this year, 11,789 of the suspects were black, while just 4,596 of them were white (108 arrestees fall into the "other" category).

"The ratio of blacks arrested is more than two to one," Boyle noted, adding that Police Commissioner John Timoney is instituting practices intended to cut down on the number of African American drivers and pedestrians stopped in the city.

For instance, a new police form will require officers to list who was stopped and why. "The Commissioner realized that stops are often a numbers game, which is impractical and serves no purpose," he testified.

Race is a "major" factor that places minorities at a disadvantage in the criminal justice system, testified Ellen Greenlee, chief of the Defender Association of Philadelphia. But an equally crucial factor is class, she said.

"That poor minority Philadelphians receive disparate treatment, to their detriment, from their participation in the criminal justice system is sadly all too true," Greenlee told the commission. White victims will also be treated more sympathetically than their minority counterparts, she said.

Greenlee called for the state Supreme Court to appoint a task force that would investigate whether ethnic and racial bias exist in the Philadelphia justice system and, if so, whether it affects the administration and how sentences are handed out. "We have been caught in a "turf war" between the Supreme Court and the State Legislature over funding such a commission," she lamented.

Evidence of racial bias is most evident in the faces of death row inmates, testified Robert Dunham, executive director for the Center for Legal Education, Advocacy and Defense Assistance.

Race discrimination permeates Philadelphia's death penalty, he said.

It's effects are present in determining who may be capitally prosecuted; which defendants will actually go to trial; who gets to serve on death penalty juries; what evidence and arguments prosecutors employ; how capital sentencing juries value the lives of both defendants and murder victims, he said.

"And, ultimately, how Philadelphia sentencing juries determine who will live and who will be sentenced to death."

Dunham asked the PCHR to consider these statistics:

Philadelphia has put more African American men and women on death row—101—than any other city in the United States.

Ninety percent of the 123 defendants sentenced to death in Philly belong to racial minorities.

For every white defendant from Philadelphia sentenced to death row, 7.77 African Americans receive a death sentence (the worst ratio of any state in the country, according to Department of Justice figures).

Given the District Attorney's awareness that an overwhelmingly disproportionate number of the people who receive the death penalty in Philadelphia are black, Dunham questioned whether the office would "tolerate such abusive overcharging if some other group was so disproportionately affected by the outcome."

Public interest lawyers backed up Dunham's claims that an inherent bias exists in this city's criminal justice system, particularly when it comes to the offense of "driving while black."

The Philadelphia ACLU analyzed police reports of pedestrian and car stops made in the 9th District (which covers part of Center City).

The organization found that 64.5 percent of all pedestrians stopped by police during the week of March 7, 1997 were African-American—even though blacks comprise just 14.3 percent of the district's population.

Similarly, 63 percent of the drivers stopped during the week of October 6, 1997 were African Americans.

ACLU Executive Director Larry Frankel stressed that he believes police officers are not solely responsible for improperly exercising discretion in the criminal justice system.

"Training and education are important tools for remedying this situation," he said. "Only when the police, prosecutors and courts understand that there is a price to be paid for their behavior will that behavior change."