On June 26th, Kimberly McCarthy became the 500th person to be executed in Texas since the state resumed the death penalty in 1982. McCarthy’s execution proceeded despite claims that racial bias played a role in the conviction and death sentence.
McCarthy, an African American convicted of killing her neighbor Dorothy Booth, faced a nearly all white jury for both the trial and sentencing. During jury selection, only four non-whites made it through to the final round, three of whom were later removed by the prosecution. Across the country the race of the victim has a profound effect on which crimes receive the death penalty. Studies in states as diverse as California, Maryland, Ohio, and Georgia have found that people convicted of murdering a white victim, as was the case for McCarthy, are many times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who killed African Americans or Hispanics.
In Texas, nearly 75% of death sentences awarded over the past 5 years have been imposed on people of color, 46% African Americans and 28% Hispanic.
Sam Millsap, a former district attorney in San Antonio, says his attitude towards the death penalty “went through a sea-change.” Says Milsap: “realised that the system I always had so much confidence in was making far too many mistakes.”
