Everyday Injustice Episode 193: Daniel Medwed and the Racism of the Death Penalty
b'In 2021, Professor Daniel Medwed published an article in the Brooklyn Law Review: \\u201cBlack Deaths Matter: the Race-of-Victim Effect and Capital Punishment.\\u201d In it, he found that irrespective of the race of the perpetrator, cases with white victims were more likely to see a death penalty charge.\\n\\nMedwed notes, that one of the \\u201ctroubling feature(s) of the death penalty landscape: Similarly situated offenders frequently receive divergent outcomes.\\u201d\\n\\nFrom there we discuss efforts to correct some of these problems such as the racial justice act in California and a recent case out of Riverside.\\n\\nOne of the main problems with the death penalty is that while the entire system in infected with racial and socio-economic inequities, \\u201cdeath is different\\u201d in that the death penalty is irreversible.\\n\\nMedwed\\u2019s research concludes: \\u201cMost Americans acknowledge, even if only grudgingly, that (1) there\\u2019s a racial dimension to the death penalty, and (2) Black defendants get the death penalty more frequently than whites.\\u201d\\n\\nBut even more alarming, \\u201cthe race of the victim, not the defendant steers cases in the direction of death.\\u201d\\n\\nListen as Daniel Medwed discusses the implications of race on the death penalty and the criminal legal system.'