Why the U.S. Death Penalty Still Targets Black Lives
By Darius Spearman (africanelements)
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As the United States approaches its historic sestercentennial anniversary, a broad coalition of human rights advocates is calling for the permanent abolition of capital punishment (enddeathpenalty.org). Human rights groups argue that the death penalty is an outdated system that is disproportionately used against poor and Black individuals (enddeathpenalty.org). This coordinated movement aims to challenge the core of the American judicial system before upcoming national milestones (enddeathpenalty.org).
On July 2, 2026, Amnesty International USA published an appeal by expert Rick Halperin (amnestyusa.org). Halperin argued that the nation must reject the ultimate cruel, inhuman, and degrading punishment as it celebrates 250 years of independence (amnestyusa.org). This effort connects to broader conversations about the rise of mass incarceration and systemic inequality in America.
The Colonial Roots of Capital Punishment
The history of the death penalty in America dates back to the first European settlements. Colonial authorities imported British common law directly to the New World (legaldictionary.net). They carried out the first recorded execution in 1608 when Captain George Kendall was shot for treason in Jamestown, Virginia (legaldictionary.net). For the next three centuries, executions served as public spectacles designed to enforce social control and maintain order.
However, opposition to the death penalty arose during the early years of the nation. In 1764, Italian criminologist Cesare Beccaria published On Crimes and Punishments (study.com). His ideas deeply influenced several Founding Fathers. For example, Thomas Jefferson introduced a bill in 1779 to restrict Virginia’s death penalty to treason and murder, though it failed by a single vote (jgspl.org).
The Brutalization Effect and Early Reforms
Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, became a major leader of the early abolitionist movement (stanford.edu). Rush argued that capital punishment did not deter crime but actually increased violence through a brutalization effect (stanford.edu). His arguments laid the groundwork for future generations of activists who questioned the moral authority of state-sanctioned killings.
Working alongside Benjamin Franklin, Rush helped convince Pennsylvania to establish degrees of murder in 1794 (jgspl.org). This historic legal change restricted the death penalty solely to first-degree murder (jgspl.org). Consequently, Pennsylvania became a pioneer in the early struggle to reform the capital punishment system.
The Grim Legacy of Slavery and Legal Lynchings
Historically, the death penalty in the United States has been linked to racial oppression. During the antebellum era, Southern states explicitly wrote racial disparities into capital sentencing laws (eji.org). In pre-Civil War Virginia, there were over 60 capital offenses for enslaved Black individuals, but only one for white citizens (eji.org). Executions of white people were so rare that local records often described them as strange and unusual spectacles.
Following the collapse of Reconstruction, extrajudicial lynchings of Black Americans became widespread across the South. As lynchings decreased in the mid-twentieth century, state-sanctioned executions rose sharply. In many ways, state executions replaced vigilante violence. During this transition, Black defendants enjoyed virtually no legal protections. These historical injustices continue to impact modern civil rights struggles.
The Case of George Stinney Jr.
The tragic case of George Stinney Jr. remains a powerful symbol of racial injustice. In 1944, South Carolina executed the 14-year-old Black youth, making him the youngest person executed in modern U.S. history (abhmuseum.org). His trial lasted less than three hours, and an all-white jury took only 10 minutes to sentence him to death (abhmuseum.org). He had no parents or legal counsel present during his interrogation (eji.org).
In December 2014, a South Carolina judge vacated Stinney’s conviction, ruling that the state had fundamentally violated his constitutional rights (eji.org). His court-appointed defense attorney called zero witnesses and filed no appeals (eji.org). This wrongful execution highlights the permanent dangers of a system shaped by racial bias.
The Noose to Needle Campaign
To educate the public about these historical connections, the U.S. Campaign to End the Death Penalty launched the “Noose to Needle” campaign (actionnetwork.org, actionnetwork.org). Led by attorney Furonda Brasfield, the project highlights how municipalities sanitized public lynchings by turning them into private, clinical executions (actionnetwork.org). The project seeks to expose the deep historical roots of modern injection chambers.
The campaign utilizes digital organizing, social media, and webinars to engage younger generations (actionnetwork.org). By doing so, advocates aim to expose the direct lineage between racial terror and modern executions (actionnetwork.org). This effort helps demystify the idea that the death penalty is a neutral legal practice.
Landmark Court Rulings and the Baldus Study
The modern legal framework of capital punishment is defined by three landmark Supreme Court decisions. In 1972, the Supreme Court issued a 5-4 ruling in Furman v. Georgia (deathpenaltyinfo.org). The Court struck down all existing state death penalty statutes, declaring that capital punishment was applied arbitrarily and capriciously (deathpenaltyinfo.org). This arbitrary application violated the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment (deathpenaltyinfo.org). The ruling resulted in a temporary nationwide suspension of executions.
However, the Supreme Court reversed course just four years later. In the 1976 case of Gregg v. Georgia, the Court ruled that revised state capital statutes were constitutional (deathpenaltyinfo.org). New laws introduced bifurcated trials and gave juries structured guidelines for sentencing (deathpenaltyinfo.org). This decision marked the beginning of the modern era, and executions resumed in 1977 with the death of Gary Gilmore in Utah (deathpenaltyinfo.org).
The most controversial civil rights ruling occurred in the 1987 case of McCleskey v. Kemp (deathpenaltyinfo.org). Warren McCleskey, a Black man, appealed his death sentence using the Baldus Study, which analyzed over 2,000 Georgia murder cases (deathpenaltyinfo.org). The study found that defendants who killed white victims were 4.3 times more likely to receive the death penalty than those who killed Black victims (deathpenaltyinfo.org). Despite accepting the statistical validity of this systemic racial bias, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against McCleskey (deathpenaltyinfo.org). The Court held that a defendant must prove that decision-makers in their specific case acted with purposeful, discriminatory intent (deathpenaltyinfo.org).
The Current State of Capital Punishment
A close examination of modern statistical data reveals why human rights groups demand abolition. Black Americans are heavily overrepresented on death row. Although they make up approximately 13% of the general population, they represent 40.66% of the country’s death row population (southerncalifornialawreview.com, deathpenaltyinfo.org). This imbalance demonstrates that systemic bias continues to influence capital sentencing.
In addition, victim race bias remains a powerful factor in death penalty outcomes. Since executions resumed in 1976, 76% of all executed cases involved white victims (stmarytx.edu). This high percentage stands in sharp contrast to the fact that Black individuals make up about half of all homicide victims nationwide. The legal system appears to value the lives of white victims far more than those of Black victims.
Poverty is another major factor that determines who ends up on death row. In legal terms, an indigent person is an individual who is too poor to afford private legal counsel (stmarytx.edu). The vast majority of death row inmates are indigent (vanderbilt.edu). Consequently, they must rely on underfunded and overworked public defender systems (vanderbilt.edu). Although landmark cases like Powell v. Alabama and Gideon v. Wainwright require the government to provide free legal counsel, the quality of representation remains severely compromised (stmarytx.edu, vanderbilt.edu). This unequal access to justice echoes historical patterns of systemic financial exploitation in marginalized communities.
The Struggle Over Innocence and Misconduct
The fallibility of the capital punishment system is one of the most compelling arguments for abolition. Since 1973, 202 individuals have been fully exonerated and released from death row due to evidence of their innocence (innocenceproject.org). The risk of executing an innocent person remains a permanent danger.
Racial disparities also exist among those who have been wrongfully convicted. More than half of all death row exonerees are Black (deathpenaltyinfo.org). Studies show that official misconduct by police officers and prosecutors is the leading driver of these wrongful convictions (deathpenaltyinfo.org). In fact, official misconduct contributed to the wrongful conviction of over 78% of Black death row exonerees (deathpenaltyinfo.org). This misconduct includes withholding exculpatory evidence, racial profiling, and coercive interrogation tactics (innocenceproject.org, deathpenaltyinfo.org).
Furthermore, systemic discrimination in jury selection often results in non-representative, conviction-prone juries (eji.org). Prosecutors frequently use preemptory strikes to intentionally exclude Black prospective jurors from capital cases (eji.org). Other major factors in wrongful convictions include perjury, false eyewitness identifications, and coercive confessions (innocenceproject.org). When combined, these elements create a dangerous system that frequently convicts innocent people.
Recent Trajectories and Public Sentiment
The push for abolition occurs during a time of striking contrasts in the justice system. In 2025, executions in the United States nearly doubled to 47, up from 25 in 2024 (deathpenaltyinfo.org, deathpenaltyinfo.org). This sudden surge was driven largely by Florida, which carried out 19 executions (deathpenaltyinfo.org). However, public support for the death penalty has collapsed to a 50-year low of 52% (prri.org). In addition, younger Americans are leading a generational shift, with 52% of adults aged 18 to 34 opposing capital punishment (prri.org).
This shift in opinion is also reflected in the actions of political leaders. In June 2026, Ohio’s Republican Governor, Mike DeWine, publicly urged the state legislature to abolish the death penalty (theintelligencer.net). DeWine, who had repeatedly delayed executions due to lethal injection protocol concerns, argued that capital punishment is no longer morally justified (theintelligencer.net). This bipartisan shift shows that opposition to executions is growing across political lines.
The Flaws of Alabama’s Judicial Override
In Alabama, a unique coalition called “We The Jury” has launched a campaign urging Governor Kay Ivey to grant clemency to 25 death row inmates (wethejury-al.com). Clemency serves as the final fail-safe of the criminal-legal system, allowing an executive to commute a death sentence to life imprisonment (deathpenaltyinfo.org). The inmates in question were sentenced under a practice known as “judicial override” (eji.org). This system allowed an elected judge to single-handedly bypass a jury’s recommendation for life and impose the death penalty instead (eji.org).
The judicial override system was heavily influenced by racial bias. According to data from the Equal Justice Initiative, 75% of life-to-death overrides in Alabama involved white victims (eji.org). Furthermore, trial judges condemned a person of color to death for killing a white victim in 31% of override cases, even though Black-on-white homicides represented only 6% of murders (eji.org). More than half of the overrides targeted African American defendants (eji.org). Because Alabama judges had to win partisan elections, they faced intense political pressure to appear tough on crime to boost their reelection campaigns (eji.org). Although Alabama banned judicial override in 2017, the law was not made retroactive, leaving dozens of people on death row under an unjust sentencing scheme (eji.org).
Nitrogen Hypoxia and the Future of Execution
As states struggle to obtain lethal injection drugs, some have turned to highly controversial new execution methods. On January 25, 2024, Alabama carried out the first execution in the world using nitrogen gas when it executed Kenneth Eugene Smith (amnestyusa.org). This method, known as nitrogen hypoxia, forces an inmate to breathe pure nitrogen gas through a mask, depriving the body of oxygen and causing death by asphyxiation (cwsl.edu).
The introduction of nitrogen hypoxia has sparked intense international criticism from human rights groups. Opponents emphasize that there is no scientific evidence to prove the humaneness of this method (cwsl.edu). In fact, veterinary organizations do not recommend nitrogen gas for euthanizing most animals because it causes severe panic and distress (cwsl.edu). The execution protocols also carry a high risk of catastrophic failure. Any oxygen leak into the mask could leave the inmate with permanent brain damage or in a persistent vegetative state instead of causing death (cwsl.edu).
Human rights advocates view nitrogen gas as another attempt to sanitize state-sanctioned violence. They argue that changing the method of execution does not address the underlying systemic bias of the death penalty. Whether using a noose or a gas mask, the state continues to apply capital punishment disproportionately to poor and marginalized communities.
Reconciling Freedom with True Justice
As the United States celebrates 250 years of independence, the ongoing existence of the death penalty remains a major exception among developed democracies. For human rights advocates, the milestone of 2026 is a critical window to align national practices with the foundational promise of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The machinery of death continues to target poor and Black Americans, demonstrating that the system remains broken.
By highlighting the direct historical connections between slavery, lynchings, and modern executions, human rights coalitions hope to build a bipartisan path toward abolition. Permanently retiring the execution chamber is not a partisan issue, but a moral necessity. Only by dismantling this archaic system can the nation truly live up to its founding ideals of justice and equality for all.
About the Author
Darius Spearman is a professor of Black Studies at San Diego City College, where he has been teaching for over 20 years. He is the founder of African Elements, a media platform dedicated to providing educational resources on the history and culture of the African diaspora. Through his work, Spearman aims to empower and educate by bringing historical context to contemporary issues affecting the Black community.
