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When Clinton, Obama and Edwards took the stage before a mostly African-American crowd in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Monday night, they came brimming with concern for the plight of black America. From the disproportionate effects of the subprime loan crisis to the racially drawn pitfalls of U.S. healthcare, the black community, said Edwards, "is hurt worse by poverty than any community in America. And it's our responsibility, not just for the African-American community, but for America, as a nation, to take on this moral challenge."
Politicians like to see moral challenges when it's convenient. The candidates have labeled the war in Iraq, global warming and the economy "moral challenges" before various audiences in the past few months. But there's one topic the leading Dems systematically exclude from their morality crusade, one that begged to be addressed before an African-American audience in a Southern state: the death penalty.
It's not news that African-Americans are disproportionately represented on death row. While 12 percent of the country is African-American, more than 40 percent of the country's death row population is black -- and although blacks and whites are murder victims in nearly equal numbers, 80 percent of the prisoners executed since the death penalty was reinstated were convicted for murders in which the victim was white. Study upon study in states across the country have discovered racial bias at every stage of the death penalty process, including one that found that the more "stereotypically black" a defendant is perceived to be, the more likely that person is to be sentenced to death. Add to that the fact that over 20 percent of black defendants who have been executed were convicted by all-white juries, and the racial reality of the death penalty becomes impossible to ignore.
Sure, all three candidates have given nod to our racist criminal justice system from time to time. At the South Carolina debate, Barack Obama acknowledged it as "something that we have to talk about," specifically, the fact that "African-Americans and whites ... are arrested at very different rates, are convicted at very different rates [and] receive very different sentences." Edwards, speaking out on the case of the Jena 6, last fall, said, "As someone who grew up in the segregated South, I feel a special responsibility to speak out on racial intolerance." Even Hillary has labeled the incarceration boom that followed passage of her husband's crime bill -- for which she lobbied hard -- "unacceptable." When it comes to criminal justice, she said in Iowa, "I want to have a thorough review of all of the penalties."
Still, not one leading Democrat is about to make criminal justice reform -- let alone the death penalty -- central to his or her platform.
Clinton, Obama and Edwards all support capital punishment. It's a position you'd be hard pressed to find on their websites, and they might not be bragging about it the way they might have in, say, 2000. Or 1996. Or 1992, the year their party's pro-death penalty stance was codified in its official party platform and then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton made a campaign trail detour to Arkansas, where he presided over the execution of mentally damaged prisoner Ricky Ray Rector. Nevertheless, all three hold on to their pro-death penalty stance, as have virtually all leading Democrats running for office in the past 20 years.
Why so much longstanding support for capital punishment? It is the easiest way to combat the quadrennial charge that Democrats are "soft on crime."
Opposing the death penalty used to be one way for Democrats to distinguish themselves from their rivals on the campaign trail -- at least before Michael Dukakis was lampooned after a 1988 debate in which he failed to wax bloodthirsty when asked if he'd want to execute a theoretical rapist/murderer if the victim was his wife, Kitty. The years that followed saw the Democrats cozy up to capital punishment: The Clinton era brought a sweeping expansion of the federal death penalty, thanks to the Crime Bill, and a sharp cut in death row appeals, thanks to the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. State executions spiked in the late '90s, more than doubling between 1996 and 1999.
See more stories tagged with: death penalty, capital punishment, south carolina, presidential primary, clinton, obama, edwards, hillary
Liliana Segura is an AlterNet staff writer and editor of the Rights & Liberties section.
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