Capital punishment for the crime of homicide in Chicago: 1870-1930.

• Author: Cheatwood, Derral

1. INTRODUCTION: CAPITAL PUNISHMENT, RACE AND POVERTY

   In the criminal justice system, the ultimate and final act in any homicide case is the application of the death penalty. Of course, not all homicides result in a death sentence, and not all homicide offenders are sentenced to death. As a consequence, the question of which offenses and which offenders merit a death sentence has always been central to the concern over whether capital punishment should be used at all. On the one hand, as times change and the criminal justice system changes with them, we would expect corresponding changes in the application of the death penalty. On the other hand, if capital punishment is rooted as fundamentally in the racial and economic inequities of society as some have argued, then even over a century we might see far more similarities than differences in how many offenders are sentenced to death, who they are, and for what kinds of homicides.

   Included in the file on Chicago homicides from 1870 to 1930 are a small number of cases in which the offender was sentenced to capital punishment and was executed. Certainly, the questions of the morality or the efficacy of capital punishment, as well as concerns over the fairness of its application, were as relevant and alive then as they are now. An analysis of these death penalty cases could enable us to consider whether some of the patterns we see in capital punishment over the last half of the twentieth century held true in Chicago over a century ago. We can consider what kinds of homicides and what kinds of offenders were more likely to draw a death sentence, and examine whether those patterns changed over time. We can also examine how the application of capital punishment changed in Chicago over those fifty years, and can compare the patterns in death sentences in Chicago to the patterns we see in modern America. This is interesting in its own right, a look at a piece of history in a major American city at the turn of the last century, but it may also bring more data to bear on the fundamental moral and practical questions which have shaped the death penalty debate for decades.

   Of course no data can resolve the basic philosophical question of capital punishment. Our goals are more modest. First, we will provide a general descriptive analysis of homicides that resulted in the death penalty in Chicago from 1870 to 1930; second, we will consider whether inequities in race and economic status were reflected in those decisions during that time; and third, we will look at changes in those cases, or in the use of capital punishment, over the fifty years of the Chicago data.

2. THE DEBATE OVER CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: THE RELEVANCE OF RACE AND POVERTY

   Debates on capital punishment tend to revolve around philosophical questions as to the morality of the death penalty, or pragmatic questions as to the efficacy or effectiveness of the death penalty. In Furman v. Georgia, Justice Brennan wrote that "although pragmatic arguments ... have been frequently advanced.... At bottom, the battle has been waged on moral grounds." (1) On one extreme, there are those who argue that it is neither right nor moral for anyone to take another's life, and that "anyone" includes the state. For these opponents, the death penalty in any form or under any condition is wrong. On the other extreme are those who adopt a rigid "eye for an eye" belief, in which anyone who kills another person without legal justification should die. From that perspective, it makes no difference whether capital punishment "functions" to deter crime or not, it is simply something that must morally be done. (2)

   In between those extremes, however, and much more characteristic of the concerns of a majority of citizens and more representative of their position if the polls are accurate, is the argument which holds that it may be legitimate, and even moral, for the state to take a life under certain circumstances if taking that life could be shown to save the lives of others. (3) Under this approach, the argument becomes pragmatic, and the primary focus shifts to the question of what these "certain circumstances" might be. (4) Most citizens would support the death penalty only under the condition that it is fairly and justly applied. While any number of criteria might be used to determine what is fair and just, since the inception of the modern debate on the death penalty two variables have stood out as problematic or key for this determination--race and poverty. These two factors constitute one focus of our analysis. The Chicago database allows us to look more closely at the question of the application of capital punishment a hundred years ago, and to ask whether these factors were paramount then as well.

   A number of factors are involved in considering who is sentenced to capital punishment and who is not. Age, gender, and even geographic location show clear associations with the occurrence of homicide, and are consequently mirrored in the death row population. Historically, however, being black and being poor have always increased any homicide offender's chance of being a death row statistic. These Chicago data provide us with an opportunity to look at those variables from yet another perspective, partly in the hope that they might indicate this has not always been the case, but more realistically in the expectation that they will confirm the consistency over time of poverty and race as key characteristics of whom we send to death row.

   1. RACE OF OFFENDER AND VICTIM IN CAPITAL HOMICIDES.

      Race stands out as the dominant factor that suggests the death penalty is not fairly and evenly applied across the population. Prior to the Furman decision, African Americans were more likely to be charged, sentenced, and executed than were others. (5) Of more than 13,000 executions in the United States documented in the Espy File from 1790 to 1985, nearly half were African American. (6) Among eleven Southern states, sixty-three percent to ninety percent of all executions during the first half of the 20th century were of blacks. (7) In rape cases, eighty-nine percent of all the offenders executed were black. (8) Jeffrey Adler has analyzed data from Chicago homicides prior to 1920, and found that African Americans were never more than 4.2% of the city's population, but comprised 12.1% of homicide offenders and 27.5% of those executed for homicide. Further, when African Americans killed a white victim, 6.8% were executed, but when they killed another African American only 1.5% were executed. And, in keeping with national data, there were no executions of a white offender for killing an African American. (9)

      In the immediate post-Furman years, the first executions were predominately older, white males. (10) Today, the balance on death row reflects, in general, the levels of involvement in homicide of blacks and whites as offenders. However, a more subtle racism appears to continue to exist. Probably reflecting what Darnell Hawkins calls the devaluation of black life, the odds of being charged and sentenced are significantly higher if the victim of the homicide is white. (11) Widmayer and Marquart argue that "[c]learly, the most salient racial factor in post-Furman capital punishment is the frequency in which white victim cases result in death sentences." (12)

      Certainly, the raw numbers themselves seem to support an argument that white life is somehow valued more in the processing of capital murder cases. Of the 598 offenders executed in the United States from 1977 to January 1, 2000, fifty-six percent were white, thirty-five percent were black. This is obviously higher than the twelve percent of the general population which is black, but on the surface appears to be much more racially balanced when compared to the population of homicide offenders, of whom just under fifty percent are black. Further, the current racial breakdown of offenders on death row awaiting execution is very close to the actual involvement in homicides, with forty-seven percent being white and forty-three percent black. (13) However, any apparent equity disappears completely when one looks at the race of the victim of those who have been executed. Eighty-two percent of the victims of the 598 executed offenders were white, but only twelve percent were black. Thus, while we seem to be coming closer to the actual percentages of involvement in homicides in our populations on death row, it is clear that one's odds of being sentenced to death if the victim was white are significantly higher than if the victim was not.

      There is also evidence that race plays a role at each stage of the processing of a capital punishment case. Research has shown race based differences at the points of charging or indictment, sentencing, and post-sentence activities. (14) The prosecution is more likely to seek the death penalty for cases with white victims. (15) Also, evidence indicates that this disproportion is most pronounced in less dramatic or brutal cases. It has been suggested that it is among these "lesser" murders, where the crime is not as brutal or as heinous, that racism on the part of the prosecutor, judge, or jury member comes into play. (16) Also, charged blacks are more likely to receive the death penalty, and when sentenced are more likely to have that sentence carried out. (17) In short, the effects of race have an impact throughout the process of enacting the death penalty.

   2. ECONOMIC STATUS AND THE SENTENCE OF DEATH

      The other variable that has been associated with executions has been poverty. However, because of the difficulties of actually measuring the wealth, or lack of the same, of many of the individuals convicted of capital murder, this has been a very difficult relationship to accurately quantify. Radelet and Vandiver note that "there is little quantitative research on the impact of socioeconomic variables on the imposition of capital punishment. Such research is badly...