Commentary, Sounding the Echoes of Racial Injustice Beyond the Death Chamber: Proposed Strategies for Moving Past McCleskey
16 Pages Posted: 12 Jul 2014
Date Written: March 2-3, 2007
Abstract
Moving past McCleskey v. Kemp requires a several-pronged strategy. First, a re-education campaign including social science research and popular culture must accompany successful litigation strategy. Second, litigation should be infused with real-life circumstances of racial discrimination, both historical and contemporary, in the jurisdictions in which legal challenges are brought. Third, litigation should draw on the data generated in “point of entry” lawsuits from a range of sources: statistical studies, sentencing data, jury composition data, policy-and-practice documentation from police and prosecutors. This kind of information has to be put into the official record of criminal cases. It creates a precedential history. Finally, litigation strategies should be distributed through different layers of the justice system, from stops and searches, misdemeanor and bail practices, all the way to capital prosecutions. These litigation strategies have to employ social science as well as lay people with thorough knowledge of relevant communities. Advocates have to deepen efforts at exposing continuing and concrete examples of racial discrimination in all aspects of life in prosecuting jurisdictions so that no single excuse or proxy can allow continued denial of the obvious fact that race still matters in capital punishment.
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