DOING RACE TO DEATH

 By WILLIAM TUCKER

May 14, 2002

MARYLAND - Gov. Parris Glendening became the latest public official to jump on the anti-capital-punishment bandwagon this month by suspending executions in his state. Glendening, shocked to learn that 9 of the 13 inmates on Maryland's death row are African-American, thinks the system may be racially biased.

 Glendening's great awakening only reiterates the common argument from the ACLU, the NAACP and other death-penalty opponents that because 42 percent of death row inmates are black, the system must be prejudiced. After all, blacks make up only 13 percent of the population.

 But this assumes that we're executing people by picking names out of the phone book. Inmates don't end up on death row for having Social Security numbers, but for murdering other people. According to the latest Bureau of Justice Statistics figures, blacks commit 51 percent of all murders in this country. The figure has declined since 1993, when blacks committed 57 percent. So African-Americans are "underrepresented" on death row.

 How is it that blacks can commit half the murders in the United States and the governor of a major state doesn't even know it? (In Maryland, where blacks are 28 percent of the population, the figure is higher.) Former CBS honcho Bernard Goldberg addresses this in "Bias," his critique of television news.

 Goldberg notes that TV newscasters are paranoid about featuring black crime, black homelessness or any other undesirable sides of black life for fear of appearing "prejudiced." So they ignore it.

 An interracial crime is always big news and usually makes the inside pages. A white person killing his grandmother is always worth a feature story. But day-to-day black-on-black crime remains essentially invisible.

 The charts nearby show the Bureau of Justice Statistics figures for the rates of homicide and homicide victimization by race since 1975.

 Over the past 35 years, black homicide and victimization has averaged seven times the white rate. In fact, all the ups and downs of the last three decades have been fluctuations in black crime. Black homicide peaked in 1980, jumped again after 1985 (a rise commonly attributed to the crack epidemic), then fell precipitously in the 1990s. Most of the past decade's remarkable drop in murder has been a reduction in black murder.

 Interracial crimes, although widely publicized, are far less common than supposed. Almost 95 percent of blacks are killed by other blacks while 85 percent of white are killed by other whites.

 The figures do widen when we consider "stranger" homicides - murders committed in the course of a rape or robbery or for some completely unknown reason. Thirty percent of white "stranger" victims are killed by blacks and 14 percent of black victims are killed by whites. Blacks and whites each commit 49 percent of stranger murders - the kind most likely to lead to capital punishment. Once again, blacks are slightly underrepresented on death row.

 The encouraging thing about black-on-black crime is that it does seem to respond to law enforcement. Executions resumed in earnest in the 1990s - rising from 14 in 1991 to 98 in 1999 - and murders dropped simultaneously.

 The result has been propitious for black victims. Black victimization fell 41 percent over the decade, while white victimization dropped only 30 percent. When Mayor Rudy Giuliani cut New York's murder rate by nearly 70 percent, it is likely that 90 percent of the reprieved victims were black or Hispanic.

 The system could still stand some improvement. A murderer is six times more likely to get the death penalty if his victim is white - which probably explains why blacks are six times more likely to be murder victims. Clearly, the answer is more capital punishment, not less.

 So why is it that an effective law-enforcement official such as Mayor Giuliani is characterized as a "racist" while a muddle-headed liberal such as Gov. Glendening is considered "humane" and "compassionate?"

 Your guess is as good as mine.