Death Penalty Unfair to Different Races
Pakistani people wave national flags during a presentation of sweets from the Pakistani Rangers to the Indian Border Security Force to celebrate Pakistan's Independence Day at the Pakistan-India border at Wagah, 14 August 2007. Pakistan celebrated the 60th anniversary of independence on Tuesday with prayers and a national minute of silence, low-key festivities for a country in the grip of political and religious turmoil.
Photo Credit: Arif Ali/AFP/Getty Images
In preparing my summary against the death penalty, I realized I left out an important factor in regard to eyewitness testimony. In my article Eyewitness Identification is More Often Wrong than Right I told my readers that we know for a fact that more than 75% of eyewitness identification testimonies pointed to the wrong person, someone innocent through DNA exoneration.
We did not discuss why this is so. One factor is that racial differences between the accused and the accuser make accurate identification almost impossible, what researchers call own-race bias (ORB). I am not saying that whites purposely discriminate against blacks. Blacks also have difficulty properly identifying non-whites, as Asians do with non-Asians, etc., so this is not a racist thing, even the most unbiased person will have trouble distinguishing people from another race.
In a previous humor article, I noted that they had a Look-a-like Contest in Pakistan -- Everybody won. Of course we know that Pakistanis do not look exactly alike to other Pakistanis, but to white American eyes people with brown skin, mustache and beard, as many in the photo above, look pretty much alike.
As an example of ORB, consider the case of the Quincy Five, a group of five African American men from Quincy, Florida who were charged with the murder of a deputy sheriff in 1970 (1). No forensic evidence was ever linked to any of the men, however five white eyewitnesses positively identified them and as well, two of the Quincy Five confessed. All five were eventually exonerated when the real killers were later found.
As I stated above, eyewitness testimony is the worst kind of evidence, being more often wrong than right. In the case of black perpetrators and white eyewitnesses the probability of accusing the wrong person is probably close to 99%. As I mentioned, there is a scientific term for this: own-race bias. More than three decades of research (2) has shown that people remember the faces of their own race better than the faces of another, less familiar race.
In the case of the Quincy Five, because of the five eyewitnesses, the police believed they had the guilty men and so to seal the case, they threatened, deceived, and beat one of the men until he confessed (3), which happens more often than not, see my article Too Many Murder Confessions Are Coerced False Confessions.
In my article Admission of Guilt Means Nothing, we discussed the case of a group of 5 men confessing to a group crime which they did not commit; and now we see a case of a group of 5 eyewitnesses who completely, absolutely, positively MIS-identified a group of men who were accused of a crime they did not commit.
It doesn't matter how many men confess to the same crime or how many eyewitnesses swear they positively saw the men who committed the crime, neither means anything. In the case of a confession, it could have been coerced; in the case of eyewitnesses it could be a case of ORB. We could easily be wrong, convicting innocent men. As long as we don't put them to death, we can always rectify the situation with apologies and restitution.
ENDNOTES
(1):
The Commission on Capital Cases, Inmate Details
At approximately 2:30 p.m. on September 18, 1970, two deputy sheriffs assigned as jailors in Leon County, Thomas Revels and Hallie M. Carroll, entered Luke’s Grocery Store to make a purchase. Three armed black males, who were in the process of robbing the store, ordered the two unarmed officers to the east side of the building and directed them to lie down on the floor with the four other victims of the robbery. After taking the deputies’ money, one of the black males stated, “We are going to kill everybody in here and start with the women.” Deputy Revels jumped to his feet and grabbed one of the assailants and a struggle ensued. Deputy Revels was shot under the left armpit and in the back of the head. Deputy Carroll attempted to aid Deputy Revels, and he was shot once in the stomach and once in the mouth. Deputy Carroll survived the attack; however, Deputy Revels died as a result of his injuries.
The following five defendants were indicted for the felony murder described above: Dave Keaton, Johnny Frederick, Alphonso Figgers, Johnny Lee Burns, and David Charles Smith, Jr. These five defendants were referred to as “the Quincy Five.”
Keaton was initially brought in for questioning in the unrelated armed robbery of a Colonial Food Store that occurred on 09/10/70.
Keaton later gave three separate confessions regarding the Luke’s Grocery robbery to different officers on different days- two of which were recorded. He gave a taped statement initially to Lt. Terry and made a subsequent taped statement to Captain Pitts. Both of the confessions that were played during the trial provided a detailed description of how Keaton and his codefendants committed the robbery. In a taped interrogation, Keaton was asked if during the commission of the robbery he remembered any “colored people” entering the store. Keaton’s taped reply was, “Yeah, there was an elderly man, come in with some bottles or something.” This information matched the trial testimony of witness, Eddy Davis, who claimed that, although he was unable to identify the assailants, he had, in fact, entered Luke’s grocery with glass bottles to return.
Keaton recanted his confession at trial. He testified that, although he had given taped statements confessing the crime to the officers, he was coerced into admitting that he was involved in the robbery at Luke’s Grocery. Keaton stated that he was brought in for questioning on another robbery case and was later asked about the Luke’s Grocery Store robbery. Keaton testified that, when he denied his involvement in the robbery of Luke’s Grocery, Lt. Terry told him that he was lying and claimed they had ways to prove that he was at the store on the night of the robbery. Keaton stated investigators refused to allow him to call anyone for five days. He claimed that he made repeated requests to phone his mother, so that she could obtain an attorney for him. He also claimed that he was driving his mother to work at the Sunland Hospital on the day of the offense.
Keaton testified that Lt. Perry directed him as how to answer all of the questions and provided him with all of the answers heard on the tape. He stated that he was subject to lengthy interrogations and claimed he finally decided to give them the statement that they wanted. Keaton stated that, although he had confessed, he assumed that at trial he would be found not guilty, since he was never present during the offense. At trial, both Lt. Terry and Capt. Pitts denied forcing Keaton to confess.
(2):
America Psychological Association, Thirty years of investigating the own-race bias in memory for faces: A meta-analytic review [PDF]
The current paper reviews the own-race bias (ORB) phenomenon in memory for human faces, the finding that own-race faces are better remembered when compared with memory for faces of another, less familiar race. Data were analyzed from a total of 39 research articles, involving 91 independent samples and nearly 5000 participants. Measures of hit and false alarm rates, and aggregate measures of discrimination accuracy and response criterion were examined, including an analysis of 8 study moderators. Several theoretical relationships were also assessed (i.e., the influence of racial attitudes and interracial contact). Overall, results indicated a “mirror effect” pattern in which own-race faces yielded a higher proportion of hits and a lower proportion of false alarms compared with other-race faces. Consistent with this effect, a significant ORB was also found in aggregate measures of discrimination accuracy and response criterion.
(3):
victimsofthestate.org, Confessions Coerced by Beatings/Torture
After Thomas Revels, an off-duty deputy sheriff, was murdered during a robbery of Luke’s Grocery store, Tallahassee police charged five black men from Quincy, Florida with the crime. One of these men, David Keaton, was an 18-year-old star football player with plans to enter the ministry. Although he had an alibi, Keaton was held in custody for more than a week. During that time he maintained he had been threatened, lied to, and beaten until he confessed. He believed that despite his confession, no jury would convict him when they heard his alibi. He was wrong. At trial his coerced confession was buttressed by the false testimony of five eyewitnesses. Keaton was convicted and sentenced to death. In his confession Keaton implicated Johnnie Frederick, who was “clean as a whistle,” in the belief that a judge and jury would see that his confession was false. Frederick was convicted as well and sentenced to life in prison.
