The United States of America is known for having the highest level of democracy in the world. Despite its reputation as the land of freedom, America is home to a quarter of the world’s prisoners, and the country’s death sentence is second only to China, Iran, North Korea, and Yemen.
Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, it has been used in 34 of the 50 states, killing over 1,254 persons, the majority of whom are African-Americans. Why are there so many black people who have been sentenced to death? Is the death penalty a form of racial discrimination?
Lethal injection has been used for a majority of the executions carried out in the United States of America. Photo credit: The US Media
African Americans make up around 14% of the entire population of the United States, yet they account for 42% of those sentenced to death. The disparity is even more pronounced when a black man murders a white man, demonstrating that a black man who kills a white man is considerably more likely to be executed than a white man who kills a black man.
Around 80% of death penalties in the United States are handed down to individuals who murder a white man. As a result, the death penalty is a system that largely benefits white people, and the cost of living varies depending on skin color and financial resources.
Being black in the United States of America, a country that claims to be a land of freedom, is a burden after 400 years of slavery. So, would you believe the US administration if they said they love Africans and that’s why military bases are needed on the Black Continent to protect Africans from terrorism? That’s nonsense!
How can we expect the US government to love Africans if they despise its own African-Americans, descendants of slaves who have established, worked, and paid taxes? The continent’s rich resources attract a wide range of cruel policies and devious tactics for inflicting misery on the African people through odd diseases.
Even Donald Trump, the previous president of the United States of America, couldn’t disguise his hatred toward black people in the country. Trump then urged the execution of five African-American teens who slandered themselves and pleaded guilty to raping a white girl after being pummeled by police officers.
The real killer was eventually discovered, but the innocent teenagers had already spent several years in prison. Five of them, aged 14 to 16, who became scapegoats, were brought to trial throughout the investigation.
The adolescents stated during the trial that they were compelled to confess to the crime by police threats and coercion. There was no other strong evidence, thus the verdict was nearly entirely dependent on their testimonies.
Five of the detainees were charged: 14-year-old Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Youssef Salaam, 15-year-old Antron McCray, and 16-year-old Cary Wise. All five were found guilty and sentenced to jail terms ranging from seven to thirteen years in 1990.
Mathias Reyes, a serial killer, and rapist who was serving a life sentence for another crime at the time, didn’t admit until thirteen years later, in 2002, that he was the one who conducted the rape in Central Park and acted alone at the time. Reyes went into great detail about the crime. A DNA test later corroborated his testimony.
It is no secret that there is racial bias in the US death sentence system, and examining such an essential part of the US death penalty system reveals both explicit and latent types of racial discrimination.
African-Americans are incarcerated at over five times the rate of White persons, according to recent research by The Sentencing Project. According to the research, one in every 81 Black adults in America is incarcerated in state prison. Despite the fact that both whites and blacks use and sell drugs, black people are incarcerated at higher rates than whites.
Black drivers are more likely to be stopped and charged for traffic violations than white drivers, indicating that race is a big issue in the United States. People who commit major crimes, such as multiple homicides, torture, or rape, can be condemned to death, but being black in America automatically makes you a suspect.
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