Death penalty more likely if victim is white

Tuesday, August 14, 2001

 By RANDY DIAMOND

Trenton Bureau

 Killers are more likely to be sentenced to death in New Jersey if their victims were white rather than black, a new judicial report has found.

 The report to the New Jersey Supreme Court was authored by Appellate Judge David S. Baime, a special court master, and it could give death penalty advocates new ammunition in a decade-long legal battle over whether blacks are unfairly sentenced to death in New Jersey.

 "There is unsettling statistical evidence indicating that cases involving killers of white victims are more likely to progress to a [death] penalty phase than cases involving killers of African-American victims," the report found.

 Despite the finding, Baime concluded that there was no statistical evidence showing that blacks were sentenced to death proportionately more than whites statewide.

 Prosecutors in New Jersey's 21 counties decide whether a murder case is eligible for the death penalty. If they decide to seek the death penalty, the trial is held in two phases. If guilt is established in the first phase, the trial proceeds to the second, or death penalty phase.

 Baime said the "racial disparity" is the result of a disproportionate number of the trials involving black murder victims being in three counties, Essex, Union, and Camden, where prosecutors sought the death penalty infrequently. In those counties, there were a large number of black murder victims.

 But in three other counties, Gloucester, Monmouth, and Middlesex, where the population is heavily white and less urban, prosecutors sought the death penalty more often. In those counties, most of the murder victims were white.

 The report is the first of what will be annual "proportionality reviews" that were mandated by the state Supreme Court to ensure that blacks were not being sentenced to death disproportionately compared with whites.

 The report, which examined between 134 and 490 cases that were eligible for the death penalty using three different statistical methods, concluded that New Jersey's death penalty is applied equally among white and black defendants.

 "There is no statistical evidence that supports the thesis that the race of the defendant affects the likelihood that he or she will receive the death penalty," Baime wrote.

 Jeff Beach, chief spokesman for the state Public Defender's Office, said lawyers in his office were troubled by the report. He said they don't understand how Baime could conclude that black and white defendants were being treated equally in relationship to the death penalty when he also found that disparate numbers of minorities being subject to death penalty when the victim was white.

 "We're looking at the possibility of bias," Beach said.

 Beach said the Public Defender's Office plans to continue to study the matter.

 Although he would not waver from his finding that blacks are not sentenced to death disproportionately, Baime called on Attorney General John Farmer Jr. to look at the issue. He said the differences in how murder defendants were treated in New Jersey's 21 counties had never fully been explored and was beyond the boundaries of the report.

 Chuck Davis, a spokesman for the state Attorney General's Office, said Farmer would examine the findings.

 The state Supreme Court has been studying the fairness of the death penalty for more than a decade.

 In 1999, Baime concluded that prosecutors, judges, and juries do not discriminate against black defendants, but he called for continued monitoring.

 Baime's report reinforced the findings of a study about two years before that, but it contrasted with an older analysis that found there was a possibility of racial disparity in the treatment of murder suspects.

 Last year, the state Supreme Court agreed to have Baime continue to study the issue of whether the death penalty was being applied fairly among minorities.

 In addition to the overall review, the Supreme Court since 1992 has reviewed each death sentence to decide whether the penalty is appropriate. There are currently 12 people on New Jersey's death row.