Introduction
The unequal administration of the death penalty along racial lines has long been a major concern in the United States (Paternoster et al., Reference Paternoster, Brame and Bacon2008; Radelet and Borg, Reference Radelet and Borg2000). Research shows that the racial (and gender) identities of both the perpetrator and victim are correlated with death-penalty decisions (Baldus et al., Reference Baldus, Woodworth and Pulaski1990; Gross and Mauro, Reference Gross and Mauro1989; Paternoster et al., Reference Paternoster, Brame and Bacon2008; Phillips and Marceau, Reference Phillips and Marceau2020; Pierce and Radelet, Reference Pierce and Radelet2002). This is problematic in a country in which justice is supposed to be blind to citizens’ race, ethnicity, gender and other social attributes. It calls into question the legitimacy and morality of the death penalty as a method of punishment. Prior empirical examinations of whether the death penalty is unequally allocated by race and ethnicity focus on either race-of-defendant or race-of-victim discrimination (or both). Much of the former is rooted in an analysis of whether Black and Latinx defendants receive more severe punishment than White defendants because of their ethnoracialFootnote 1 identity, while the latter focuses on whether offenders (of any race or ethnicity) receive more severe punishment when their victims are White (Baldus and Woodworth, Reference Baldus and Woodworth2004). There is ample evidence to support both tracks. These studies are important for what they have to tell us about the influential role that race and ethnicity play in the allocation of the death penalty in the United States, but largely absent from this literature is a detailed analysis of the rare instances in which Whites are actually executed for crimes against ethnoracial minorities. To the best of my knowledge, this type of inquiry is limited to a single published study by Michael L. Radelet (Reference Radelet1989), who found only thirty cases out of thousands of executions in the United States involving the execution of a White defendant for crimes against a Black person. Radelet’s in-depth study is useful for making predictions about the underlying mechanisms that may be associated with the unequal allocation of the death penalty in the United States, but it was published thirty years ago. Much has changed in the demographic composition of the general population, the prison population, and the death row population in particular. Hispanics, who now constitute the largest minority group in the country, are overrepresented in prisons relative to their share of the general population: they are 18.5% of the general population,Footnote 2 30.4% of the prison population,Footnote 3 and 13% of the death row population.Footnote 4 Similarly, Blacks are only 12.4% of the general population,Footnote 5 38.1% of the prison population,Footnote 6 and astoundingly, 42% of the death row population.Footnote 7 By comparison, Asian Americans––the fastest growing minority group–-represent 5.5% of the general population,Footnote 8 only1.5% of the federal prison population,Footnote 9 and .01% of the death row population.Footnote 10 Thus, by limiting his analysis to a White offender/Black victim dyad, Radelet leaves open three questions that are addressed in this article. First, given that it has been thirty years since the publication of his study, can the pattern he observed for the White offender/Black victim dyad be replicated with more recent data? In addressing this question this study answers Radelet and Mello’s (Reference Radelet and Mello1985) call for more research that examines death-penalty cases with Black victims. The results show that out of 570 executions conducted between December 1982 and July 2020, only six Whites in the state of Texas have been executed for crimes against Blacks. Second, do the patterns observed in Radelet’s study extend to a White offender/Latinx victim or White offender/Asian victim dyad? Although with slightly more frequency, the results show that Whites are rarely executed for crimes against Hispanics and Asians. And, finally, to what extent might other factors, beyond the ethnoracial and gender status of the minority victim, be associated with White executions for crimes against people of color? Radelet (Reference Radelet1989) found that the rare execution of Whites for crimes against Blacks had little to do with the humanity of the victims and more to do with other social status indicators that made the perpetrators anathema to the public. For example, any one or more of the following status markers could lead to the condemnation of a White offender: possessing a prior criminal history, deemed of marginal social status, committing a crime that threatens the stability of White institutions or power structures (i.e., prisons and police forces), or committing a crime of exceptional heinousness, among other things. The evidence from Radelet’s study shows that most of these status markers are present to one degree or another in the rare instances in which Whites are executed for crimes against people of color.
The aim of this study is to explore Radelet’s ideas using unique data from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. In particular, I extend Radelet’s (Reference Radelet1989) study by (1) employing more recent data, (2) analyzing, not just White perpetrator/Black victim cases, but also cases involving White perpetrator/Hispanic victims, and White perpetrator/Asian victims, and (3), offering social dominance theory as a useful lens by which to make sense of the data. Following a discussion of the most infamous death-penalty case in modern U.S. history involving a White offender and Black victim, I detail Radelet’s (Reference Radelet1989) theory, followed by a discussion of social dominance theory. I then provide a description of the unique data upon which the study is based. After detailing the plan of analysis for this study and the results of my empirical analysis, I conclude with a summary of the research findings and a discussion of their theoretical and methodological implications.
Background
On the evening of June 7, 1998, James Byrd, Jr., a forty-nine-year-old Black man, was hitchhiking in Jasper, Texas (population 8859). Byrd, who suffered a mental impairment due to seizures, accepted a ride from three White men—John William King, Lawrence Brewer, and Shawn Allen Berry—who, unbeknownst to him, were members of two White supremacist groups, the Confederate Knights of America and the Ku Klux Klan. In one of the most heinous crimes of the century, the three men beat Byrd relentlessly, tormented him, and spray-painted his face. They then used a logging chain attached to their Ford pickup truck to drag his body to the point of dismemberment and decapitation.
The sheer horror of the crime sent shock waves throughout the world and marked a little-known milestone in the annals of American jurisprudence: it was the first time in modern Texas history that a White man (John William King) was sentenced to death for crimes against a Black person.Footnote 11 Such a dubious distinction was a perverse reminder of the hundreds of lynchings that took place in the United States before and after 1950 without any legal consequences whatsoever levied against the perpetrators. According to the Equal Justice Initiative (2021), a private nonprofit organization that keeps track of such statistics, 4400 African Americans were lynched between reconstruction and World War II. Astoundingly, no one was ever held accountable for the gruesome acts that were described as “public spectacle lynchings … attended by the entire White community and conducted as celebratory acts of racial control and domination.”Footnote 12
In the case of James Byrd, Jr., it can be argued that the justice system worked in that his death was avenged to some extent via the execution of two of the three White assailants who committed crimes against him. But does this prove that Black lives matter as much as White lives when it comes to the administration of the death penalty, or is this simply an exception that proves the rule that only in the most extreme circumstances are Whites executed for crimes against Blacks?
Radelet’s Theory
What little we know about Whites who have been executed for crimes against racial minorities is restricted to a study by Michael Radelet (Reference Radelet1989). Two research questions framed his study: How many death penalty cases involved the execution of Whites for crimes against Blacks? Informed by prior research, Radelet hypothesized that there should be no “executions for White-on-Black offenses … and any found are theoretically anomalous. Such executions support the theory only because their relative frequency is low” (Reference Radelet1989, p. 530). Using national data stretching back to 1608 and supplemental information drawn from newspapers and published court decisions, Radelet addressed a second question: What about these cases, beyond race and ethnicity, can explain the rare execution of Whites for crimes against Blacks? Quoting Robert Merton (Reference Merton1968), Radelet viewed each rare event of a White person being executed for crimes against a Black person as a “datum which becomes the occasion for developing new theory or for extending an existing theory” (Reference Radelet1989, p. 538). He further asserted that making sense of these rare events “necessitates theoretical specification of what factors can explain the effects of defendant and victim races on case processing” (Reference Radelet1989, p. 531). Radelet hypothesized that other status markers, beyond the race of the victim, might show that what appear to be theoretical anomalies might actually “fit a more general pattern that reactions to homicide are more severe when the victim is of higher status than the defendant” (Reference Radelet1989, p. 531).
Among his chief findings, Radelet found that ten cases out of thirty involved crimes against slaves—which were punishable not because of empathy for the slaves’ humanity but because of the slaves’ economic value to the slave master. Slaves were deemed to be property, so crimes against them were conceptualized as crimes against the property owners, namely White men, an offense that violated the stability of the White power structure. In seven of the cases the White defendant had a prior criminal record of serious crimes, suggesting, according to Radelet, that the offenders may have “totally exhausted their community’s tolerance, and [their] histories made the authorities eager to accept any further criminality as justification for the harshest possible punishment” (Reference Radelet1989, p. 535). In five other cases the occupational status of the Black victim surpassed that of the White offender—a finding consistent with the general proposition that convictions are more likely for low-status defendants when their victims are of higher status (Black Reference Black1976; Farrell and Swigert, Reference Farrell and Swigert1986). In four other cases the White defendant was regarded as a marginal member of the community, an appellation rendering offenders more vulnerable at every stage of the legal process (Black Reference Black1976; Radelet Reference Radelet1989). In four remaining cases Radelet argued that the heinousness of the crime may have been strong enough to cancel out the effects of the victim’s race. Overall, he concluded, “it was not the outrage over the violated rights of the Black victim or the inherent value of the victim’s life that led to the condemnation” (Reference Radelet1989, p. 536) of the White offender. Instead, he reasoned, “nearly all of the cases were treated as economic crimes or involve defendants who were hated, had lower status than their Black victims, or posed a threat or challenge to the White power structure” (Reference Radelet1989, p. 536). Based on Radelet’s findings, it is reasonable to expect status characteristics (beyond race, ethnicity, or gender) to be present in the rare event of Whites who are executed for crimes against Blacks and, by way of extension, I expect such indicators to be present in cases where Whites have been executed for crimes against Latinx people and Asian Americans. This research is rooted in the assumption that Whites who commit murders against different racial groups are similar, on average, along the various status characteristics noted above. Thus any observed differences by race/ethnicity of victims on these characteristics when examining White offenders would be surprising, suggesting a legal system that differentially executes Whites along these dimensions in cases that involve people of color.
Social Dominance Theory
Radelet’s theory comports with Social Dominance Theory (SDT), but the latter offers additional ways of understanding the patterns found in his data and more recent national statistics. Generally speaking, SDT argues that a complex society such as the United States can be characterized by group-based hierarchies comprising a dominant group on top (e.g., Whites) and subordinate groups at the bottom (e.g., racial/ethnic minorities) (Sidanius et al., Reference Sidanius, Liu, Shaw and Pratto1994). In such a system, greater social value is afforded the dominant group as they enjoy higher social status, power, prestige, and privileges relative to the subordinate group. To maintain this hegemony, the power elite invest large amounts of resources into order maintenance by way of hierarchy enhancing institutions (Sidanius Reference Sidanius, Iyengar and McGuire1993). The criminal justice system in the United States serves as a prime hierarchy enhancing institution, in that it is a mechanism for the maintenance of group dominance and social control (Sidanius et al., Reference Sidanius, Liu, Shaw and Pratto1994). Thus, within this system, police officers, prosecutors, judges, juries, prison officials, etc., serve at the pleasure of the dominant group. The net result is a system wherein racial minorities, relative to their White counterparts, experience harsher police encounters, longer sentencing, and, relative to their numbers in the population, greater exposure to the death penalty. As with Radelet’s theory, SDT predicts that very few, if any, Whites would experience execution for crimes against Blacks. And, by way of extension, it is reasonable to assume under SDT that few Whites, if any, would experience execution for crimes against Latinos/as and Asian Americans.
Thus, when taken together, Radelet’s theory and SDT offer complementary frames by which to make sense of a profound conclusion reached in a recent meta analysis of volumes of death penalty studies: “Black lives don’t matter” (Baumgartner et al., Reference Baumgartner, Grigg and Mastro2015) when it comes to the manner in which the death penalty is administered in the United States. A representative sampling of this voluminous literature may be divided between prosecutorial decisions to seek the death penalty versus judge or jury decisions to impose the death penalty (for comprehensive reviews see Grosso et al., Reference Grosso, O’Brien, Taylor, Woodworth, Acker, Bohm and Lanier2014; Radelet and Borg, Reference Radelet and Borg2000).
Race and Decisions to Seek and Impose the Death Penalty
When it comes to prosecutorial decisions to seek the death penalty, the research reveals that homicides involving Black victims require a higher threshold of aggravation than homicides involving White victims before prosecutors pursue the death penalty (Baldus et al., Reference Baldus, Woodworth and Pulaski1990; Petersen Reference Petersen2017; Pierce and Radelet, Reference Pierce and Radelet2002; Williams and Holcomb, Reference Williams and Holcomb2001). In addition, prosecutors are more likely to pursue death-penalty charges in cases involving White female victims regardless of the race of the defendant (Paternoster Reference Paternoster1984; Williams et al., Reference Williams, Demuth and Holcomb2007). Racial bias may creep into capital cases long before juries are impaneled. Ann M. Eisenberg (Reference Eisenberg2017) found that prosecutors used a heavy hand when it came to preemptory strikes against prospective Black jurors in South Carolina. In particular, Eisenberg reports that 35% of eligible Black venire members were eliminated compared to 12% of eligible White venire members. She concluded that “the death-qualification process impeded a substantial number of Black venire members from serving” (Eisenberg Reference Eisenberg2017, p. 300). Other studies show prosecutorial bias in cases involving a Black defendant and a White victim as Blacks in such cases are treated more harshly (Baldus and Woodworth, Reference Baldus and Woodworth2004; Baldus et al., Reference Baldus, Woodworth and Pulaski1990) as evidenced by the fact that the primary charge against them is likely to be accompanied by additional felony charges thereby heightening the likelihood of a capital conviction (Radelet and Pierce, Reference Radelet and Pierce1991).
In addition to prosecutorial decisions, judges and jurors exercise wide discretion when it comes to the imposition of the death penalty. In particular, the sentencing literature shows that the victim’s race influences who gets sentenced to death, all else being equal (Baldus and Woodworth, Reference Baldus and Woodworth2004; Beckett and Evans, Reference Beckett and Evans2016; Bowers et al., Reference Bowers, Sandys and Brewer2003; Bowers et al., Reference Bowers, Steiner and Sandys2001; Gross and Mauro, Reference Gross and Mauro1984; Gruber Reference Gruber2018; Paternoster et al., Reference Paternoster, Brame and Bacon2008; Radelet and Pierce, Reference Radelet and Pierce1991). The Death Penalty Information Center, reports that “nearly 80% of death row defendants who have been executed were sentenced to death for killing White victims, even though in society as a whole about half of all murder victims are African American.”Footnote 13 Using quantitative data and qualitative juror narratives, Willliam J. Bowers and colleagues (Reference Bowers, Steiner and Sandys2001; Reference Bowers, Sandys and Brewer2003) identified two phenomena indicative of jury bias: the presence of “White male dominance” on the jury and the presence of a “Black male” on the jury. With regard to the former, having five or more White males on the jury doubled the likelihood of a death sentence. Concerning the latter, Bowers and colleagues (Reference Bowers, Steiner and Sandys2001) found that having one or more Black males (as opposed to no Black males) on the jury decreased the likelihood of a death sentence. In both cases, the racial composition of the jury was associated with the imposition of the death penalty.
The death penalty sentencing literature also shows that offenders (regardless of race) who murder Black male victims are less likely to be sentenced to death compared to defendants who murder White victims (Bowers and Pierce, Reference Bowers and Pierce1980; O’Brien et al., Reference O’Brien, Grosso, Woodworth and Taylor2015; Paternoster Reference Paternoster1984; Williams et al., Reference Williams, Demuth and Holcomb2007). At the same time, Blacks who commit capital crimes against White victims are more likely to be sentenced to death relative to Blacks who commit crimes against other groups (Bowers and Pierce, Reference Bowers and Pierce1980).
Finally, some studies find that a higher premium is placed on the lives of White women (e.g., “White female effect”). Jefferson E. Holcomb and colleagues (Reference Holcomb, Williams and Demuth2004) analyzed White male, Black male, White female, and Black female victim homicides and concluded that the “only dyad that was significantly more likely to result in a death sentence was the White female victim” dyad (p. 983). In a follow-up study (Williams et al., Reference Williams, Demuth and Holcomb2007) using different data, the authors replicated the “White female effect” but also discovered a “Black male effect” wherein cases involving Black male victims, relative to other victims, were found to be treated the most leniently as Black men were largely viewed as being responsible for their own victimization (Girgenti-Malone Reference Girgenti-Malone2019).Footnote 14 This finding is consistent with recent research showing that jurors in capital cases often have less empathy for and feel the most distance from Black male homicide victims and their families (Girgenti-Malone Reference Girgenti-Malone2019).
Prior literature has largely been limited to death penalty decisions made by prosecutors, juries and judges, with very little focus on racial bias in actual executions. According to Scott Phillips and Justin Marceau (Reference Phillips and Marceau2020), this myopic focus has led to a severe underestimation of the extent of racial bias in death penalty processes. Picking up where David C. Baldus and colleagues’ (Reference Baldus, Woodworth and Pulaski1990) seminal research left off, and adding updated information on actual executions, Phillips and Marceau (Reference Phillips and Marceau2020) found that racial disparities in death penalty processes are actually magnified post sentencing, that is, during the appellate and clemency stages. They concluded that the odds of execution are two to five times greater if the victim is White, while the chances of not being executed following a death sentence are much greater if the victim is Black.
The upshot of this literature is quite striking but not surprising: throughout each stage of the death penalty process (from initial prosecutorial decisions, to judge and jury decisions, to the actual execution itself) the judicial system is racialized and gendered in the United States.Footnote 15 That is, there is a racial and gender hierarchy of victim empathy when it comes to the value placed on human life. At the top of the victim hierarchy are those for whom society has the most empathy, namely, White women. At the very bottom of the hierarchy are those for whom society has the least victim empathy, Black men. This hierarchy depicts how victims’ race/ethnicity and gender intersect to produce differential death-penalty outcomes in the United States.
Most prior literature examines the effects of victims’ race or gender, but not both simultaneously (for exceptions see Girgenti-Malone, Reference Girgenti-Malone2019; Holcomb et al., Reference Holcomb, Williams and Demuth2004; Williams et al., Reference Williams, Demuth and Holcomb2007). However, descriptive data at the national level shows that an intersectional analysis is warranted when examining death penalty consequences. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since 1977, there were 1532 executions in the United States. Of this number, only thirty-four cases involved a White offender/Black victim, and of those, eleven also killed Whites including five offenders who killed a White women; thirty cases involved a White offender/Hispanic victim, and of those, seven cases involved the killing of one or more Whites (including three White women); eight executions involved a White offender/Asian victim, and three of those cases also involved the murder of a White victim (one White woman); while one case involved a White offender/Native American victim with no White victims.Footnote 16 Thus, overall, these national statistics strongly suggests that race and ethnicity intersect with gender when it comes to understanding the rare execution of Whites for crimes against people of color.
Three research questions frame this study. First, how many Whites in Texas have been executed for crimes against Black men, Black women, Hispanic men, Hispanic women, Asian men, or Asian women?Footnote 17 Second, to what extent are status characteristics (other than race, ethnicity, and gender) present in each case? Finally, how does social dominance theory help us to understand the patterns in the data?
Data and Plan of Analysis
Data Sources
The data used to answer these questions come from several sources: the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ 2021), the Texas Attorney General’s Office, and multiple major news media outlets. Texas is known as the “undisputed capital of capital punishment” (Johnson et al., Reference Johnson, McGunigall-Smith and Callahan2012, p. 15). Indeed, since the 1972 Supreme Court decision in Furman v. Georgia that deemed capital punishment a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause 408 U.S. 238 (1972), Texas has executed five times the number of inmates (570) as Virginia, the next highest execution state, which executed 113 inmates over the same time period. Beyond this, several other reasons render Texas an ideal state within which to address the above questions. Detailed case information on all executions in the state of Texas are archived and made available to the public on a website maintained by the TDCJ. This article is derived from a larger project based on 570 accessed records of inmates executed by the State of Texas between December 7, 1982 and July 2020. This time period of available online data is circumscribed by the TDCJ. The TDCJ provides detailed information on the offense committed by each prisoner on death row, the offender’s demographic background (race, ethnicity, gender), socioeconomic status (occupation, education), prior prison record, and, importantly for this article, the victim’s race, ethnicity, gender, age, and occupational status.Footnote 18
The Texas Attorney General’s Office provided a second source of data. Before each execution the Texas Attorney General issues a media advisory which provides news outlets with the proposed date and general time of an impending execution. Additional information about the inmate, the victim, and details of the capital case not found on the TDCJ website are often included in these advisories.
Following Radelet’s approach, a final source of data was media news coverage of the executions that included information on the victims, perpetrators, and the conditions surrounding the commission of the capital offense that led to the death penalty verdict. In the state of Texas, news reporters are typically included among the list of eligible witnesses to an execution. For background preparation for this project, I contacted Mike Gracyzk, a longtime Associated Press reporter who has witnessed and reported on over 429 executions in Texas. Reporters who serve as witnesses to executions offer firsthand accounts of what goes on in both the death chamber and the witness rooms leading up to and beyond the execution. What they report is disseminated by news outlets nationwide and around the world.
I began the search process by simply entering the name of each executed offender into the Google search engine which led to numerous articles. This approach yielded contemporaneous local, national, and international news stories from multiple outlets including:
CBS News, DailyMail.com, Washington Post, UPI.com, NBC News, NationalPost.com, Amarillo Globe-News, The New York Times, National Public Radio, MyPlainview.com, and Texas Tribune.
These sources often provided additional information about the inmate, the victim, or the crime itself not reported on the TDCJ website.
I triangulated information from the TDCJ, the Texas Attorney General’s Office, and contemporary local, national, and international news reports in an effort to produce the most complete record possible for the cases analyzed in this article. This approach spawned detailed, corroborative information about the White offender, minority victim, and information about the capital offenses leading to the death penalty verdict and subsequent execution of a White offender for crimes against a person of color in Texas. The demographic breakdown of Texas is similar to that of the population nationwide in the case of Blacks (13%), Asians (5.2%), “American Indian” and Alaska Native (1.0%), and Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islanders (0.1%). However, the proportion of “Hispanic or Latino” residents in Texas (39.7%) far exceeds their numbers in the general population (18.5%), while the proportion of Whites in Texas (41.2%) is much lower than national statistics (60.1%). This means that, among all groups, Hispanics are overrepresented in the State of Texas.Footnote 19
Empirical Analysis
The empirical analysis unfolded in two phases. In the first phase the goal was to address the question: How often are Whites in Texas executed for crimes against ethnoracial minorities, namely, Black men, Black women, Hispanic men, Hispanic women, Asian men, and Asian women? This quantitative question lends itself to the descriptive analysis provided in the next section.
Most literature on the unequal allocation of the death penalty employs quantitative methodologies that make it difficult to study rare events such as the execution of Whites for crimes against ethnoracial minorities. These approaches mostly rely on drawing a sample from a population of events which, according to David J. Harding and colleagues (Reference Harding, Fox and Mehta2002), is problematic if the goal is to identify underlying mechanisms and determine how they may interact. Unlike much of the research reviewed above, this study is not an attempt to investigate racial and ethnic differences in the death penalty stemming from prosecutorial decisions, jury or judge decisions, or actual executions. Such multivariate approaches using large data sets characterize much of the death penalty literature over the last thirty years. Thus, in the second phase of the study I employ an explanatory analysis to not only identify the underlying mechanisms associated with this issue, but to extend Radelet’s theory beyond providing a description of executions for White-on-Black crimes to a description of executions for White-on-Hispanic and White-on-Asian crimes.
With this in mind, my research assistant and I developed a rubric (Table 1) cross-classifying the offender’s and victim’s ascribed characteristics (race, ethnicity, gender) with factors Radelet theorized to be associated with death-penalty verdicts—so called status markers. Using the three data sources discussed above, we determined whether, prior to the death penalty offense, the White offender had a prior criminal record; engaged in prior criminal activity but had no formal record; possessed an occupational status that was lower than that of the victim; or could be classified as a person of marginal social status (e.g., drug user). As another plausible connection, we also looked for instances in which the offender committed a capital crime that threatened the stability of the White power structure, such as, the killing of a police officer or murder within prison walls. These cases are shaded in Table 1.
Racial and Nonracial Status Attributes of Offenders and Race, Ethnic and Gender Identity of Minority Victims
Heinousness is rated on a scale from 1 to 4. Level 1 = 1 to 2 aggravating factors involved in the case; Level 2 = 3 to 4 factors; Level 3 = 5 to 6 factors; Level 4 = 7 or more factors.
For the final factor, the level of heinousness associated with the crime (Radelet Reference Radelet1989), I combined Phillips’ (Reference Phillips2008) list of nineteen aggravating factors that have been linked to death-penalty verdicts (Appendix) with Texas Penal Code Section 19.03, which details specific crimes that constitute capital murder in Texas.Footnote 20 For analytical purposes, these two complimentary sources combine to paint a more complete picture of the range of formal and informal aggravating factors that may be at play in any given death penalty case. As an example, a murder committed in a federal prison by an inmate already serving time for murder, or the murder of a police officer, are two aggravating factors absent from Phillips’ list but present in the Texas law. By the same token, the murder of a mentally challenged person, violating the victim’s body post death, or murdering a victim in front of family members, are all present on Phillips’ list but absent from Texas law. Using the combined list of aggravating factors, I created a heinousness scale that ranges from 1 to 4, with Level 1 equal to 1 - 2 aggravating factors involved in the case; Level 2 equal to 3 - 4 aggravating factors; Level 3 equal to 5 - 6 aggravating factors; and Level 4, the highest level of heinousness, equal to 7 or more aggravating factors involved in the case.
As shown in the Appendix, I numbered Phillips’ list of aggravating factors from 1 to 19, with 1 = victim vulnerable (e.g., handicapped, mental retardation, frail, pregnant) to 19 = overkill. Scores for the level of heinousness of the crime are displayed in column 7 of Table 1, while the number associated with Phillips’ list of aggravating factors and a written description of items from Texas Penal Code appears in column 8. As an example, in Table 1, Harold Bernard is the first entry. His crime netted a Level 2 on the heinousness scale as it involved at least three known aggravating factors on Phillips’ list, including an execution-style murder, the killing was unnecessary to complete the felony, and the victim was killed in front of family members.
Finally, in Table 1, the presence of a status attribute was coded as 1, while the lack of a status attribute was coded as 0. Summing both the attribute scores and the heinousness score for each inmate yields row totals ranging from a low social-deviant classification of 2 to the highest social-deviant classification of 6.
Findings
Race, Ethnicity, and Gender
Radelet’s (Reference Radelet1989) first question concerned the frequency of executions for White-on-Black crimes. I calculated the distribution of minority victims broken down by race, ethnicity, and gender between December 1982 to July 2020—a period that witnessed 570 executions in Texas. A total of six White men were executed for committing capital crimes against four Black men and two Black women, thereby representing 0.7% and 0.35%, respectively, of all executions in Texas during the time period in question. By contrast, more White men were executed for crimes against Latinx victims. For example, sixteen White men were executed for crimes against thirteen Latinos (2.3% of all executions) and five Latinas (0.87% of all executions). The TDCJ archives revealed only one case (0.18%) in which a White man was executed for crimes against an Asian American. These results not only corroborate Radelet’s core finding that Whites are rarely executed for crimes against Blacks, but, by way of extension, the results suggest that Whites are rarely executed for crimes against Hispanics and Asians. Of course, the lack of available data on death-penalty eligible murder cases in Texas precludes a definitive assessment of the rarity of these cases. Ideally, much could be learned if we knew the total number of Whites in Texas who have murdered people of color over the time period in question, as that would provide some indication of the number of Whites at risk of receiving the ultimate penalty. Notwithstanding the absence of such information, given the history of violence perpetrated against people of color in Texas by Whites, and the racial and ethnic bias reported earlier throughout the judicial system in general, it stretches the boundaries of credulity to believe that the small number of actual executions reported above accurately reflect the number of death penalty eligible murder cases involving White perpetrators and minority victims in Texas.
As a second question, Radelet asked “What about these cases can explain the anomalous event of executing a White for crime against Blacks?” (Reference Radelet1989, p. 534). Radelet theorized that any case of a White offender suffering execution for crimes against a Black person would be an exception to the rule only if the impetus behind the executions were rooted in a community understanding of the humanity of the victim. In contrast, such cases would not be exceptions to the rule, Radelet reasoned, if the White offender had other things working against him that made him a pariah to the community prior to the death-penalty charge. Such other things could include having a prior criminal record, a criminal history without a formal record, or an occupational status lower than the victim. Also, being a person of marginal social status, committing an exceptionally heinous crime, or committing a crime that threatens the stability of the White power structure, are all status markers that could qualify someone for the death penalty.
To explore these possibilities, in Table 1 I cross-classified each status marker by the White offender and ethnoracial and gender identity of the victim. This study lacks a comparison group of White offenders who committed death-penalty eligible crimes against people of color but were not executed. Thus, the purpose of the following analyses is simply to determine the number of status markers at play in each case in which a White offender was executed for crimes against women and men of color. This approach reveals that 82% of the twenty-two cases involve at least two status markers, and 36% of the cases involve three or more status markers. I detail the relevance of each marker below.
Prior Criminal History of White Offenders
Information regarding an offender’s prior criminal record, a predictor of future dangerousness,Footnote 21 factors prominently into a jury’s decision to recommend the death penalty (Phillips Reference Phillips2008). In Radelet’s study, only 23% of the White offenders had a prior criminal record. The Texas data (Table 1) reveals that 54% (twelve out of twenty-two) of White offenders had a criminal record before the imposition of the death penalty (Cases #1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 12, 15, 16, 20, 21, and 22).Footnote 22 A close look at each case showed that prior crimes ran the gamut from burglary to murder. But it would be a mistake to assume that all White offenders possessed a formal criminal record before being sentenced and executed for crimes against an ethnoracial minority. A full 32% (seven of twenty-two) of White offenders in the Texas data flew under the legal radar prior to their death-penalty conviction. However, close inspection of supplemental evidence shows that lacking a formal criminal record does not mean the absence of criminal activity. Consider the case of Jack Clark (#3), a man who had no prior record but, according to reports, was an army and navy deserter who was accused of assault and attempted rape of a relative, child abuse and neglect, and hostile and threatening behavior toward neighbors and representatives of the Children’s Protective Service.Footnote 23 Similarly, William Berkley (#13) also had no formal criminal record but he did have a violent past that included verbal threats against a female Asian coworker, making ethnic slurs, and choking a girlfriend.Footnote 24 Finally, Cleve Foster (#17) also lacked a formal criminal record but supplemental reports reveal a troubled history that included allegations that as an army recruiter, he supplied alcohol to underage students and had sex with them. He was subsequently denied reenlistment in the army.Footnote 25
Ethnicity intersects with criminality in ways not previously expected. Four of the five cases in which an offender was without a prior criminal record but nonetheless engaged in criminal activities, involved a Latinx victim (#3, 11, 13, and 18). This pattern is not evident among other ethnoracial groups save for the sole case of Cleve Foster (#17), who had no prior criminal record but was executed nonetheless for crimes against a female Sudanese immigrant.
In only three of twenty-two cases was there an offender who had no prior criminal record and no reported prior criminal activity (#9, 10, and 19). This provides some insight into just how rare it is for a White offender to receive the death penalty for crimes against an ethnoracial minority minus some prior criminal exposure. The data shows that when this does occur, it is largely a function of aggravating circumstances. In one case, Richard Cartwright (#9) targeted his victim based on the assumption that the victim was gay. In two other cases, Jonathan Moore (#10) was executed for killing a police officer and, in a final case Coy Wesbrook (#19) murdered multiple White victims.
White Offender’s Occupational Status Lower than the Victim’s
Radelet (Reference Radelet1989) suggested that when Whites are executed for crimes against Blacks it often involves a scenario in which the class status (i.e., occupation) of the Black victim supersedes that of the White offender. He based this assumption on Donald’s Black’s (Reference Black1976) contention that “downward law is greater than upward law” (p. 21). In other words, as Ronald A. Farrell and Victoria Lynn Swigert (Reference Farrell and Swigert1986) found, offenders are treated more harshly when their class status is lower than that of their victims. In the Texas data, 49% of the cases (ten of twenty-two) fit this pattern.Footnote 26 This pattern holds in two out of six cases involving a Black victim (#5, 17), in the single case involving an Asian victim (#1), and in seven of sixteen cases involving a Latinx victim (#4, 6, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14). For example, James Knox (#4) is listed as a drywall finisher on the TDCJ website while his victim, Joseph Sanchez, owned a pharmacy and was working as a licensed pharmacist when he was shot execution-style in an apparent robbery after telling the offender he had no drugs. In two other high-profile cases (#10 and 12), the occupational status of the victim was singled out as noteworthy. Jonathan Moore (#10), a telemarketer, was executed for shooting police officer Fabian Dominguez in the face with the officer’s own gun. Police officers hold a special sentimental place in the Texas judicial system, so much so that the first item listed in section 9.03 of the Texas Penal Code notes that the killing of a police officer is a capital murder crime. Officer Dominguez was off duty but in uniform when he encountered the offender and co-defendants, who were parked in a suspicious vehicle in his neighborhood. The officer was married and the father of twin infant girls.Footnote 27 Similarly, Joshua Maxwell’s case (#12) gained widespread attention because the victim, Rodolfo Lopes II, was a Deputy Sheriff.Footnote 28
White Offender of Marginal Social Status
Radelet suggested that White defendants who are already characterized as socially marginal are more vulnerable to the death penalty. Applying a community standard, he defines White marginality as individuals with a “dissipated character,” a “tramp,” a “hard drinker,” or “White trash” (Reference Radelet1989, p. 535). Of course, any offender with a prior criminal record or criminal activity may fit the community definition of marginal social status. In the Texas data, 86% (eighteen of twenty-two) of the White offenders who committed crimes against minorities can be classified as a marginalized member of society before committing the capital offense that ultimately led to their execution. This includes a self-described anarchist (#10), child sex offenders (#17), drug dealers and users (#13, 14, 18), and offenders with reported affiliations with gangs, White-supremacist groups, or associates who commit hate crimes targeting ethnoracial minorities or gays (#6, 7, 9, 16, 18, and 19).
Heinousness of the Crime
Having established that multiple social status markers are often present when Whites are executed for crimes against ethnoracial minorities, a final important marker that may repulse the citizenry and lead to a death penalty verdict and subsequent execution is the heinousness of the crime. Radelet further theorized that “the heinousness of the crime itself may have been sufficiently powerful to cancel the effects of the victim’s race” (Reference Radelet1989, p. 535). He asserts that in response to a particularly heinous act, “the community reaction may reflect an unqualified disgust and contempt for the offender unmitigated by the fact of his or the victim’s race” (Reference Radelet1989, p. 535). By taking a close look at the aggravating circumstances surrounding each case we can decide whether the heinousness of the crime overshadowed the minority status of the victim and the socially privileged status of the White male offender. As we might expect, Table 1 reveals that all twenty-two cases involved an aggravating circumstance of one sort or another, a requirement for a case to be death penalty eligible in Texas in the first place. However, the number of status markers associated with the crime, the level of heinousness, and whether the capital crime represented a threat to the prevailing White power structure varied considerably across cases.
I have already introduced some details of the James Byrd case––considered by historians as one of the most recent lynchings in the United StatesFootnote 29 ––which led to the execution of two White men, with a third White man (Shawn Berry) receiving a life sentence.Footnote 30 The national and international attention drawn to the case led Texas’s 77th Legislature to pass the James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Act in 2001.Footnote 31 The ring leader, John King (#22), remained a staunch racist until his execution. He proudly donned a collection of tattoos depicting a Black person hanging by a noose from a tree, the words “Aryan Pride,” and various Nazi symbols emblazoned on his body.Footnote 32 A second offender in the case, Lawrence Brewer (#16), also remained unrepentant leading up to his execution, boldly proclaiming to one journalist that he “would do it all over again.”Footnote 33 The third man, Shawn Berry, was spared the death penalty and will be eligible for parole in 2038.Footnote 34 As shown in Table 1, the two White men executed for the torture and murder of James Byrd earned the highest level of heinousness (Level 4), with multiple aggravating factors listed under Phillips’ (Reference Phillips2008) criteria, including killing a handicapped victim, physical and mental torture, unnecessary pain, lingering death, brutal beating, expressed pleasure regarding the killing, multiple methods of killing, and overkill.
Another case in Texas resulting in the execution of a White man for crimes against a Black man also had overtones of a hate crime as the offender, Lee Taylor (#15), was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, the oldest White prison gang in the country, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.Footnote 35 Taylor, already serving a life sentence in a Texas prison for a murder he committed at age sixteen, stabbed a Black male inmate thirteen times with a prison-made shank in a reportedly racially-motivated attack.Footnote 36 While the ambush, execution-style murder, and overkill would qualify as aggravating factors under Phillips’ (Reference Phillips2008) scheme, several additional factors no doubt sealed Taylor’s fate, including the fact that he was already serving a life sentence, the murder took place within prison walls, and Taylor was classified by the TDCJ as a member of a designated security-threat group—clear violations of the stability of the existing power structure (Radelet Reference Radelet1989). These factors net Taylor a Level 3 on the heinousness scale. When examining these facts through the lens of Radelet’s theory, it could be argued that Taylor’s death sentence had more to do with the fact that he violated important institutional norms by committing a murder behind prison walls and less to do with the Black victim’s humanity.
But not all crimes against Blacks resulting in the execution of a White person can be said to be motivated by racial hatred. Consider the case of Christopher Wilkins (#20). Wilkins was executed for murdering Willie Freeman (Black man) and Mike Silva (Latino) during a drug deal that went bad. Not only did Wilkins have a prior criminal record, but he confessed to killing another Latino (Gilbert Vallejo) over a pay phone dispute two days before murdering Freeman and Silva.Footnote 37 Thus, the murder of multiple victims, having a prior criminal history, and the execution style, ambush killings, were arguably correlated with Wilkins’s death penalty verdict and subsequent execution.
In the two remaining cases the victims were Black women. Just as with the Black male victims discussed above, the facts surrounding each case further supports Radelet’s theory. Consider the cases of Larry Hayes (#5) and Cleve Foster (#17). Both cases involve aggravating circumstances unrelated to their minority victim. Larry Hayes’ crimes (amounting to Level 2 on the heinousness scale) included fleeing the scene after shooting his wife (a White woman who was the primary target) following a domestic dispute over her alleged infidelity.Footnote 38 He drove to a local gas station, where he encountered employee Rosalyn Robinson, an eighteen-year-old Black woman. Hayes walked her outside at gunpoint, shot her in the head, and sped away in her car. The incident was captured on videotape.Footnote 39 Cleve Foster’s crimes (Level 1 of heinousness) were committed against Sudanese immigrant Nyaneur Pal. The victim was sexually assaulted and shot and her discarded body was later found in a ditch.Footnote 40 Additional information suggests that the murder weapon was later linked to the rape and murder of a twenty-two-year-old White student.Footnote 41 The bottom line is that, not only do we see multiple murders in both cases, but each case also involves White female victims, suggesting the presence of a “White female effect.” Thus, as Radelet’s theory suggests, it is doubtful that the White offenders would have suffered the ultimate penalty solely for the crimes committed against the Black female victims.
The first recorded case of a White man executed in the modern era for crimes against a person of color in Texas involved an Asian American victim. Harold Barnard (#1) shot sixteen-year-old Tuan Nguyen, a Vietnamese store clerk employed at a 7-11 convenience store managed by Nguyen’s parents, with a sawed-off shotgun. At sixteen years of age, the youth of the victim was not enough to qualify the offender for execution in Texas given that, according to Texas law, the murder of a victim under ten years of age qualifies as a capital offense. However, other facts elevate the crime to a Level 2 on the heinousness scale, including the fact that the crime was an execution-style murder, the killing was unnecessary to complete the felony (i.e., felony murder rule), and the victim was killed in the presence of family members.
Finally, I turn to the case of White men who have been executed for crimes against Hispanic men and women in Texas. The data showed that these cases constitute by far the majority of cases in which Whites have been executed for crimes against ethnoracial minorities. As displayed in Table 1, a total of sixteen White men were executed for crimes against thirteen Latinos and five Latinas.Footnote 42
These findings beg the question of whether condemnation of the White offender was primarily a function of the violated rights of Latinx victims as human beings or whether other factors were at play. The data suggest the latter. Four important aggravating themes emerge from the Texas data involving Hispanic victims. First, in four cases the Hispanic victim was an officer of the law (#10, 12, 14 and 18), which, as noted previously, almost always leads to the death penalty in Texas. Second, three of the cases involved multiple victims (#11, 18, and 19)—also a clear violation of Texas law. In these cases there were two Latino victims (#11), and two Latina victims (#21). In another case the White offender also shot a responding White police officer (#18), and in another case the Latino victim was not the primary target (#19). In the latter case, Coy Wesbrook shot several people, including a Latino, but his thirty-two-year-old White ex-wife was his primary target, as he told the arresting deputies: “My ex-wife. That’s who I came to get.”Footnote 43 Additional information provided by the TDCJ shed important light on this case. On the day of the capital crime, Wesbrook was summoned to his ex-wife’s house with the hope of reconciling with her. He found several people sitting around the house drinking. Wesbrook joined the festivities. At one point he noticed his ex-wife had disappeared and, after a brief search, discovered her in a bedroom having sex with two men. Wesbrook retrieved a .36-caliber hunting rifle from his truck and shot and killed his wife, two other White females, a White man, and Antonio Cruz, a Latino. Wesbrook lacked a prior criminal record, but the killing of multiple victims, four White victims in general, and three White women in particular (Paternoster Reference Paternoster1984; Williams et al., Reference Williams, Demuth and Holcomb2007), an ambush style murder, and shooting a victim execution style (Phillips Reference Phillips2008), place Wesbrook’s crimes at Level 2 on the heinousness scale. Arguably, the evidence strongly suggests that these were the reasons Wesbrook was condemned to death, not because of the murder of the lone Latino victim.
Unlike the Wesbrook scenario, in two other cases the Latino victim was the primary target but, importantly, the cases involved aggravating circumstances reminiscent of hate crimes. Donald Aldrich (#6) was executed for the abduction and murder of Nicholus West, a Latino. According to the TDCJ, the victim was targeted for robbery because he was assumed by Aldrich and two accomplices to be gay. West’s body was found discarded in a clay pit partially clothed and riddled with bullets, indicative of overkill. Information obtained from the prosecutor’s office showed that Aldrich was considered the leader of a gang that regularly harassed gay people. He later said he didn’t like homosexuals because he had been raped at age nine by a gay cousin.Footnote 44 This rises to a Level 3 on the heinousness scale because the victim’s dead body was violated (mutilated with multiple bullets), the murder was planned, the body was disrobed (Phillips Reference Phillips2008), and this was undoubtedly a hate crime, although Texas had no formal hate-crime statute at the time.
In another case involving a Latino as the primary target, Richard Cartwright (#9) robbed and murdered thirty-seven-year-old Nick Moraida. According to the TDCJ, Cartwright and two co-defendants lured the victim to a remote area and robbed him of his watch and money. A co-defendant cut the victim’s throat and Cartwright shot him in the back with a pistol. Moraida’s body washed up on a beach the next day. It was reported that Cartwright was one of three men who fooled the victim into thinking they were gay and offered to share a beer with him.Footnote 45 Further reporting suggested that the offenders posed as gay prostitutes to lure their victim. They reasoned that a gay man would be an easy target because he would be less apt to report the robbery to the police. According to information gleaned from the prosecutor’s office, the plan turned deadly when the victim tried to flee.Footnote 46 This case netted a Level 2 on the heinousness scale as it involved an ambush, significant planning, and multiple methods of killing (Phillips Reference Phillips2008).
Two of the earliest Texas cases resulting in the execution of a White man for crimes against an ethnoracial minority involved two Latina victims. In the first case, Jeffrey Motley (#2) abducted thirty-year-old Marie Duron at gun-point and forced her to withdraw $300 from her bank. Trial testimony revealed that at some point during the abduction Motley shot her in the back with a 12-gauge shotgun.Footnote 47 Her decomposed body was found over one week later in a field in La Porte, Texas. While Motley had a prior record (burglary), the most clear-cut aggravating factors (amounting to Level 2 on the heinous scale) in the case involved the planned execution-style murder, kidnapping, and robbery of a subdued, defenseless victim by a methodical, passionless offender who ultimately disposed of the body.
Two other cases involved sexual assault of a Latina victim (#3, 13)—another aggravating factor when coupled with murder. Jack Clark (#3) abducted twenty-three-year-old Melisa Garcia, took her to an isolated area, raped her, and inflicted two fatal stab wounds to her chest. In a final case involving a Latina victim, William Berkley (#13) was executed for the kidnap, sexual assault, and murder of eighteen-year-old Sophia Martinez. According to reports, he shot the high school student five times in the head.Footnote 48 The aggravating circumstances are evident in these two cases as both qualify for Level 2 on the heinous scale in that, in addition to murder, they involve brutal rapes, abductions, the killing of defenseless victims, and discarding of their bodies.
Overall, seven out of twenty-two White offenders registered heinousness scores at Levels 3 and 4, which under Radelet’s theory suggests that in those cases the heinousness of the crime, and the disgust that it generated among the public, may have been powerful enough to cancel out the effects of the perpetrator’s and victim’s ethnoracial identity. In the Texas data, racial animus motivated the most gruesome crimes against Black men; homophobia, drug related motivations, and the killing of police officers, informed some of the most odious crimes against Latinos; and sexually motivated crimes such as rape fueled the most repulsive crimes against Latinas and one of the two Black women in the sample. Other crimes by White offenders against people of color were noteworthy for their direct assault on White symbols of domination and control (e.g., prisons and police officers), actions that were statutorily punishable by death regardless of the identity of the victim.
Conclusion
Efforts to systematically explore the conditions under which Whites are executed for crimes against ethnoracial minorities are as rare as the actual incidence of such executions. Until now, what little we knew assumed a Black/White binary showing that Whites are rarely executed for crimes against Blacks (Radelet Reference Radelet1989). The data upon which this study is based corroborate Radelet’s (Reference Radelet1989) research but also extends it in significant ways.
First, as Radelet discovered, Whites are rarely executed for committing crimes against Blacks. Out of 570 available cases between December 1982 and July 2020, only six Whites experienced the ultimate penalty for crimes against Blacks, representing 1% of all executions in Texas. This study further contributes to the literature by showing that White men are seldom executed for crimes against Asians, as only one such case appears in the Texas database. Surprisingly, 73% of the cases (sixteen of twenty-two) in which a White person was executed for crimes against an ethnoracial minority involved a Latinx victim (twelve men and four women)—still a paltry sum given the population of Hispanics and Whites in Texas, but a noticeable difference relative to Blacks and Asians.
Second, the data are also consistent with Radelet’s conclusion that when Whites are executed for crimes against Blacks, it is not because of “the inherent value of the victim’s life” (Reference Radelet1989, p. 536). Instead, the evidence strongly supports the contention that other status markers are usually present in the case, such as the White offender’s prior criminal record or activity, marginal social status, the heinousness of the crime, or the crime constituted a threat to the White power structure. A close inspection of the data reveals additional qualifying conditions. In one case a White woman rather than the Black victim was the primary target, which means both the “White female effect” (a potent death penalty predictor regardless of the race of the offender), and the multiple victim feature of the case arguably sealed the offender’s fate. In another case the capital crime took place in a prison facility, which almost always results in the death penalty if the offender is already serving time for murder. In another case the Black victim was murdered along with a Latino victim. Thus, the multiple murder component of the crime may have raised the profile of the case enough to warrant a death-penalty decision. In a final case the Black victim was a Sudanese immigrant and the murder weapon was tied to the rape and killing of a White female student. In other words, when it comes to Black victims, these rare exceptions prove the rule that, when Whites are executed for committing crimes against Blacks, extenuating circumstances are present over and above the Black victim’s humanity.
Third, non-ethnoracial status markers also factor prominently in the one case of a White offender receiving the death penalty for the murder of an Asian American. The offender had a prior criminal record, was of marginal social status, and had a lower occupational status than the victim even though the victim, an employee at the family store, was only sixteen-years-old at the time of the crime.
Finally, the role of status markers in the case of Latinx victims also represents an important contribution to the literature. In the vast majority of cases the White offender had been engaged in prior criminal activities and was clearly a marginal member of society. Three of the cases stand out because the Latino victims were police officers—a capital offense by statute in Texas no matter the race of the offender. In other cases, the Latinx victim was not the primary target—a White female victim was the main target, which again points to the power of the “White female effect.” In four other cases there were multiple victims, or the murder took place in a prison, or the crime was exceptionally heinous. Overall, when coupled with the finding that sixteen of the twenty-two cases in this study involved Latinx victims, the results here are consistent with Phillips’ (Reference Phillips2008) analysis of death-penalty allocation showing that Hispanics are treated more similarly to Whites than Blacks and Asians. Future research would do well to explore this finding in other death penalty states where there is a critical mass of Hispanics, Whites, and Blacks in the population.
These conclusions must be weighed against the limitations of this study. Chief among these is the fact that occupational data for either the victim or the offender are missing in nine of the twenty-two cases, thereby possibly underestimating the role socioeconomic status plays in explaining why Whites were executed for crimes against ethnoracial minorities. Also, the data are limited to the state of Texas, leaving open the question of whether the results shown here are generalizable to other states. That the findings corroborate Radelet’s study which is based on national data bodes well. In addition, as with Radelet’s study, this research did not include a comparison group of White offenders who committed death eligible crimes against people of color that did not result in executions. Thus, future researchers should explore this path in an effort to definitively determine the role of race, ethnicity, and gender in the allocation of executions in Texas and beyond. Despite these limitations, this study significantly contributes to what we previously knew about the rare execution of Whites for committing crimes against women and men of color.
The broader methodological and theoretical implications of this study are worth mentioning. Methodologically, social scientific analysis of the role that race, ethnicity, and gender play in the allocation of the death penalty usually employs methods that make it difficult to study rare events such as the execution of Whites for crimes against ethnoracial minorities. While important, these typically large sample size studies are severely limited when it comes to examining rare but important events. Nor are large quantitative studies able to identify underlying mechanisms or how they may interact to produce various outcomes. Yet, as this article shows, such rare events can tell us much about the various underlying factors that are associated with the allocation of the ultimate penalty against Whites who commit crimes against ethnoracial minorities. Expanding this type of analysis to other death penalty states would certainly shed additional light on this issue.
Beyond Radelet’s theory, the data also supports Social Dominance Theory (SDT). While scholars should further explore the connection, a few obvious paths of inquiry could begin with the fact that the Texas data show, and SDT predicts (Pratto et al., Reference Pratto, Sidanius and Levin2006), that men are the most frequent perpetrators and targets of lethal interpersonal violence. Over 98% of inmates serving on Texas’s death row are men. The Texas data also fits SDT’s notion of hierarchy-enhancing (HE) institutions. HE institutions, such as the criminal justice system, assign more positive value to dominant group members (Whites) and less value to subordinate group members (people of color). Such differential valuation helps to explain the severe overrepresentation of people of color serving prison sentences even after taking into account group differences in rates of criminality (Pratto et al., Reference Pratto, Sidanius and Levin2006; Sidanius and Pratto, Reference Sidanius and Pratto1999). More specifically, SDT’s “subordinate male target hypothesis” argues that minority men are the greatest threat to dominant group hegemony. This further explains the “Black male effect”—a phenomenon in which cases involving Black male victims (relative to other victims) are treated more leniently and with less victim-empathy (Girgenti-Malone Reference Girgenti-Malone2019; William et al., Reference Williams, Demuth and Holcomb2007).
These are just a few of the ways in which the criminal justice system serves as a mechanism in the maintenance of group dominance and social control. Under SDT, an important reason why White men suffered the ultimate penalty for committing crimes against people of color had more to do with the threat they posed to the stability and “legitimacy” of the judicial system as an important hierarchy enhancing institution. The killing of Latino police officers (symbols of the state), the murder of two Black inmates within prison walls (hierarchy enhancing institutions), the public dismemberment and lynching of a Black man along with the international outcry that ensued, and the rape and killing of minority women, are horrific enough crimes to pose a tangible threat to the local system of social dominance and control governing the Texas judicial system. Arguably, in order for such a system to be maintained, it’s imperative to punish those whose actions would threaten the stability of the White power structure—including cases in which the perpetrators are White men.
Finally, the fact that Whites are rarely executed for crimes against minorities, coupled with the finding that multiple factors beyond the humanity of the minority victim are at play before such executions take place, raises important questions about the legitimacy of the death penalty in the United States. In 1994, during his last year of service on the Supreme Court, Associate Justice Harry A. Blackmun argued the point this way in his dissenting opinion in Callins v. Collins: “Twenty years have passed since this Court declared that the death penalty must be imposed fairly, and with reasonable consistency, or not at all, and, despite the effort of the states and courts to devise legal formulas and procedural rules to meet this daunting challenge, the death penalty remains fraught with arbitrariness, discrimination, caprice, and mistake” (Blackmun Reference Blackmun1994). Justice Blackman’s statement is as true today as it was a quarter century ago. As shown in this article, the rare execution of Whites who commit crimes against people of color can be viewed as exceptions that prove a longstanding and dubious rule that, when it comes to the judicial system in the United States, minority lives are valued less than White lives.
Acknowledgements
The author acknowledges Rachel Bousel and Anjana Mathew for excellent research assistance. Valuable feedback on various drafts of this paper was provided by Michael Radelet, Alicia Girgenti-Malone, Don Waisanen, David Hoffman, and anonymous reviewers. Any remaining errors or omissions should be attributed to the author.
Appendix
Heinousness is rated on a scale from 1 to 4. Level 1 = 1 to 2 aggravating factors involved in the case; Level 2 = 3 to 4 factors; Level 3 = 5 to 6 factors; Level 4 = 7 or more factors.
