Matthew T. Mangino
GateHouse Media
August 25, 2017
Yesterday at 6:22 p.m., at the State Prison in Starke,
Florida the state Department of Corrections carried out its first execution in
19 months. Florida has executed 93 people since the death penalty was
reinstated in 1979. Only three states — Texas, Virginia and Oklahoma — have
executed more killers in the modern era of the death penalty.
There was another first when Mark James Asay was executed
yesterday. A database maintained by the Death Penalty Information Center, a
non-profit opposed to the death penalty, noted that Asay was the first white
man executed for killing a black victim in Florida in more than 50 years.
Nationally, the racial pattern of death sentences, while not
as extreme as Florida, leans sharply the same way, according to the Washington
Post. Nationwide since 1976, 20 whites have been executed for murdering blacks,
while 288 blacks have been executed for killing whites.
Asay, who is white, fatally shot Robert Lee Booker, a black
man, after making multiple racist comments, prosecutors said. Asay’s second
victim was Robert McDowell, who was mixed race, white and Hispanic. Prosecutors
say Asay had hired McDowell, who was dressed as a woman, for sex and shot him
six times after discovering his gender.
The vast majority of killings of whites are committed by
other whites, according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report, and the overwhelming
majority of killings of blacks are by other blacks. However, killings of black
males by white people are labeled justifiable much more often than other
killings.
When a white person kills a black man in America, the killer
often faces no legal consequences. In one in six of these killings, there is no
criminal sanction, according to a new Marshall Project analysis of 400,000
homicides committed between 1980 and 2014. That rate is far higher than the one
for homicides involving other combinations of races.
In almost 17 percent of cases when a black man was killed by
a white person over the last three decades, the killing was categorized as
justifiable, which is the term used when a police officer or a civilian kills
someone committing a crime or in self-defense. Overall, the police classify
fewer than 2 percent of homicides committed by civilians as justifiable.
The disparity persists across different cities, different
ages, different weapons and different relationships between killer and victim.
For example, in Houston overall three percent of homicides
were determined to be justified. The justification rate soars to 37 percent
when a white person kills a black person; in Los Angeles, the overall
justification rate is 2 percent — 25 percent when a white kills a black; in
Philadelphia, overall three percent — 23 percent when a white person kills a
black person.
The Marshall Project acknowledges the problem may not be
explained solely by racism. The report points to a 2013 study of justifiable
homicide by the Urban Institute. The researcher, John Roman wrote, “If, for
instance, white-on-black homicides were mainly defensive shootings in a
residence or business, and black-on-white shootings mainly occurred during the
commission of a street crime, then the (racial) disparity would be warranted.”
If the racial disparities only existed in the context of
justifiable homicide then Roman’s explanation might be worth considering.
However, as is painfully obvious in Florida, racial disparities exist with
regard to the death penalty. Not to mention, that black people, according to
the Prison Policy Initiative, are nearly six times as likely to be incarcerated
as white people.
Yesterday’s execution is a painful reminder that racial
problems in this country go far beyond white supremacists and confederate
monuments.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett,
Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by
McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him
on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.
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