In 2000, then-Illinois Gov. George Ryan, a Republican, imposed a moratorium on the death penalty. Ryan established a commission to review the state’s administration of capital punishment.
It didn’t take a state commission to know there are racial disparities in the imposition of the death penalty. Black men are disproportionately represented on death row.
And the death sentence is more likely to be imposed if the victim is white. Since the restoration of the death penalty in 1976, roughly 80 percent of the victims were white.
Still, Ryan’s bold move reignited the debate about race and capital punishment.
The Race and the Death Penalty Project of the Charles Houston Institute for Race and Justice is committed to examining the “long and deep connection between racial politics in the United States and the state-sanctioned executions of African Americans.”
I asked Harvard Law Prof. Charles J. Ogletree Jr., the institute’s founder and executive director, why folks should care about this issue. Ogletree gave me an earful:
There is growing discomfort with capital punishment in many American states. New Jersey has decided to abolish the death penalty, it is held in abeyance in New York, and California recently expressed reservations about it.
The increasing magnitude of the difficulties with capital punishment makes it irrational.
On Friday, the institute will hold a forum on the death penalty at Morgan State, a historically black university in Baltimore. The forum is designed to focus on remedies.
The keynote speaker is New York University Law Prof. Bryan Stevenson, who's also executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative of Alabama and a nationally recognized capital defense litigator.
The event is free and open to the public, but you must register in advance by sending an email here
