KENTUCKY RACIAL JUSTICE ACT
Kentucky has become the first state to pass legislation that out-laws the use of race as a factor in deciding who should get the death penalty. Unfortunately, the Racial Justice Act (RJA) is not retroactive. The RJA, signed into law by Governor Patton on May 1, 1998, allows a capital defendant to use statistical evidence to show that race influenced the decision to seek the death penalty in her or his case.
Statistical evidence may consist of evidence that a death sentence was sought significantly more frequently against persons of one race or sought more frequently against defendants whose victims were of one race. The decision will be made in each defendant's trial court at a pretrial hearing and the defendant has the burden of proof by clear and convincing evidence.
The Kentucky bill was initiated after an investigation found that all of the state's death row inmates were there for killing whites and none for killing blacks. The success of the bill was due, in part, to a coalition of the Kentucky Department of Public Advocacy, the Catholic Diocese, and the abolition and civil rights groups in the state.
While the U.S. House of Representatives twice has passed bills similar to the RJA, they were defeated in the Senate. The passage of the RJA in Kentucky, however, is a hopeful sign that Congress and other states may follow Kentucky's example.
Additional impetus for passing racial justice legislation are two newly published studies on race and death penalty released in a June 4, 1998 report by the Death Penalty Information Center. The report, "The Death Penalty in Black and White: Who lives, Who dies, Who Decides" reveals the persistence of racial bias in the death penalty.
One of the studies discovered that the odds in Philadelphia of getting the death penalty are nearly four times higher if the defendant is African American. The second study found that decision-makers were a potential reason for this racial bias: of the chief district attorneys in counties using the death penalty, nearly 98% are white and only 1% are African American.
96% of the studies in the last twenty years that reviewed the relationship between race and the death penalty, including a 1990 study by the U.S. General Accounting Office, found there was a pattern of discrimination based on either the race of the victim, the race of the defendant, or both.
-From Coalition for Prisoners' Rights Newsletter, July 1998