What I have been asking you is not whether or not there is a disparity ... But rather, what you intend to do about it?
If a white man commits the same crime as a black man ... And they receive the same punishment ... Should that punishment be what the white man had been getting, or what the black man had been getting before you got rid of the disparity?
You cannot answer the question with a little of both, or the cases should be judged individually ... Because they are judged individually now and that is not good enough for you, and you are comparing them to each other in order to obtain a disparity.
I never once, not once, said that judging them individually was not “good enough.”
What I said was that each person deserves to be treated equally before the law, which is the absolute bedrock of justice. Each person deserves to be tried by a jury of their peers, defended with the same quality of care regardless of race.
If convicted, the same type and severity of crime should receive the same sentence. The facts show that a person of color get handed sentences that are much harsher than a white person who is found guilty of a crime of identical severity. That is a consistent pattern, that simply, in and of itself, shows discrimination. Separate but equal was shown to be a lie long, long ago.
As the current court case in North Carolina shoes, such disparities in sentencing can be traced in part to discriminatory practices in jury selection by illegally eliminating people of color from the jury pool when the defendant is a person of color. That violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution (Batson v. Kentucky). It also appears in the instructions given to juries, through the use of racially charged language during trials, and not providing the same quality of defense to people of color that whites get.
Possible solutions include:
1) Enforce laws that clearly ban the use of racial criteria to whiten the jury, so that the jury selection is race blind. Where laws are lacking, add new protections to completely outlaw peremptory challenges by prosecutors using racially charged languages, such as “have you ever had any type of prior contact with law enforcement?” or “Do you live in a high-crime neighborhood?”. For courts that consistently break the rules, supervision can be made by State or Federal Justice Dept staff doing random checks.
2) Right now, jury selection records are difficult and time-consuming to obtain. An easy solution is to put the information, already available publicly but only in hard copy, on a searchable web site where the public and journalists can access it and look for patterns of discrimination.
E.g. the database would protect/hide the names and identified of those interviewed for the jury. Each potential juror would be identified by a number, and state which race each potential juror self-identified as. Then show the list of question asked that juror, and (if the juror was not selected) which attorney asked for that person to be excluded. (Juror A, Hispanic, rejected by the prosecuting attorney, along with the list of questions used, and any intervention made by the judge)
3) Ensure defense attorneys appointed to people of color have the same qualifications as those appointed to white defendants, and use the same level of effort to defend the accused. This could be done making the state bar records of each attorney also searchable on the same database.
I’m sure there are other solutions, but that should do for a start.……
