Race and Criminal Justice

• Author: Paul Butler
• Pages: 2087-2089

Page 2087

Racial minorities have long sought equal application of the rights the Constitution provides to people accused of crimes. They have needed the protection of these rights because the CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM has at times seemed vehemently biased against them. The result of this quest for justice is that the Supreme Court has often addressed whether particular law enforcement practices are unconstitutional because of racial concerns. The Court has interpreted the Constitution as prohibiting the most obvious and blatant forms of RACIAL DISCRIMINATION, such as excluding racial minorities from juries. There are, however, some practices such as racially skewed application of the CAPITAL PUNISHMENT and race-based assessments of suspicion, where thus far the Court has declined to order constitutional relief.

Historically, the Constitution has had a limited role in regulating the criminal justice system. Most criminal law originates with, and is enforced by, the states. The principle of FEDERALISM has limited the ability of the federal government to intervene, even in cases in which states have applied, or not applied, the criminal law in egregiously unfair ways. The FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT promises the " EQUAL PROTECTION OF THE LAWS " to all persons, but infamous cases like HODGES V. UNITED STATES (1906) and SCREWS V. UNITED STATES (1945) demonstrated the tenuous nature of this protection. In Hodges, whites were prosecuted by the federal government for vicious physical attacks against African Americans. The Court overturned the convictions, on the ground that the federal government exceeded its authority by making a federal case out of what should have been, in the Court's view, state charges. Thus, in the same manner that federalism provided constitutional justification for Southern states to establish de jure SEGREGATION, the Court allowed the principle to foster separate and unequal application of the criminal law to minority and white accused persons. Hodges, in which the Court held that the THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT gave Congress the power to reach only acts that closely resembled enslavement, was later OVERRULED by JONES V. ALFRED H. MAYER CO. (1968).

In other cases, however, the Court has been less reticent about insuring a strong role for the federal government in protecting the criminal justice rights of people of color. In fact, many of the best known decisions of constitutional CRIMINAL PROCEDURE involved African American or Hispanic litigants. These cases include POWELL V. ALABAMA (1932), which established the RIGHT TO COUNSEL in capital cases; BROWN V. MISSISSIPPI (1936), which held that coerced confessions violate DUE PROCESS; and MIRANDA V. ARIZONA (1966), which established the...