Download This PaperThe Reasonable Black Person Standard in Criminal Law: Impartiality, Justice and the Social Sciences
Southern Journal of Policy and Justice, 13, 2019
18 Pages Posted: 19 May 2020
Date Written: 2019
Abstract
The article titled, 'The Reasonable Black Person Standard in Criminal Law: Impartiality, Justice and the Social Sciences', examines the reasonable person standard, long used by courts to analyze whether a suspect acted similarly to the way any other "reasonable person" would have acted under the given circumstances.
While the standard is currently applied in an objective manner, it should instead consider the suspect's race, accounting for the idea that a reasonable white person and a reasonable black person would quite likely respond differently to any situation involving law enforcement.
As such, it is necessary to apply a "reasonable black person" standard to cases involving a black suspect, in order to consider his or her unique experiences with and within the U.S. criminal justice system.
Keywords: Reasonable Person Standard, Reasonable Black Person Standard, Criminal Justice, Injustice, Black Men, Crime
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