PLAYING THE RACE CARD AGAINST THE DEATH PENALTY

I have always been and continue to be a strong advocate for the death penalty because I am convinced that it acts as a deterrent to premeditated murders and keeps some robbers, rapists, kidnappers and burglars from killing their victims. As a proponent of capital punishment I certainly do not want to see any innocent person executed and I abhor any prosecutorial misconduct in seeking the death penalty. And I have long complained about the poor legal defense murderers get who cannot afford the good lawyers those of some means can hire.

I’m sure there have been several cases of innocent defendants being sentenced to death and executed. But to abolish the death penalty for that reason would be like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

The Houston Chronicle’s editors have gone on record a number of times with their opposition to capital punishment. In Sunday’s edition, the Chronicle got around to playing the race card by publishing ‘Racial Pattern In Death Penalty,’ an article by staff writer Lise Olsen in which she pointed out that 12 of the last 13 men condemned in Harris County (which includes the City of Houston) have been black.

“The last white man to join death row from Harris County was a convicted serial killer in 2004. Since then, 12 of the last 13 men newly condemned to die have been black, a Houston Chronicle analysis of prison and prosecution records shows,” Olsen wrote as the lead-in paragraph of her article.

Olsen also wrote that “More than a third of the state's current 305 death row inmates came from Harris County. So did half of the 121 black inmates on death row, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice data.”

The opponents of capital punishment have long been playing the race card. They argue that since blacks make up only about 15% of the U.S. population, a disproportionate number of them have been sentenced to death - an implication that the death penalty is wrought throughout with racism. Of course that’s like the argument used by those who claim that our criminal justice system is racist because a disproportionate number of blacks are imprisoned.

Could it be that those disproportionate numbers are the result of blacks committing a disproportionate number of robberies, rapes, burglaries and murders? It isn’t my imagination when I see that most of those shown arrested on the news programs of the CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox TV channels in Houston are black. Could it be that those four TV stations are all really racist and deliberately showing the arrests of blacks to the exclusion of the arrests of whites?

The death sentence is reserved for the most terrible murders. The overwhelming majority of black murderers never face the death penalty. Only the most vicious murderers and serial killers are tried in capital cases, be they black or white.

Olsen also wrote that “Blacks account for about half of recent murder arrests in Harris County. But they more often get charged with capital murder than whites or Hispanics, an analysis of more than 300 recent court cases by the Chronicle shows.”

Blacks make up only about 12% of Harris County’s population. Since blacks account for about half of recent murder arrests, the racial pattern that Olsen writes about is meaningless. I suggest that the reason whites have not been sentenced to death in Harris County is because the murders they committed were not as terrible as those committed by the blacks that were sentenced to death.

To the death penalty abolitionists I say: STOP PLAYING THE RACE CARD!