Sacred Victims: Fifty Years of Data on Victim Race and Sex as Predictors of Execution

In this essay, we update and expand David Baldus’s famous study of Georgia homicides in the 1970s to uncover the impact of the race and sex of homicide victims on whether a defendant was sentenced to death and ultimately executed. We show that the odds of a death sentence were sixteen times greater if the victim was a White woman than if the victim was a Black man, even when other factors that might explain the disparity were taken into account. Furthermore, we identified a clear hierarchy among victims with regard to whether a death sentence was ultimately carried out. Among the defendants who were sent to death row for killing a White woman, 30% were executed.

But the share drops to 19% if the victim was a White man, 10% if the victim was a Black woman, and 0% if the victim was a Black man. We then use contemporary, nationwide Supplemental Homicide Report (SHR) data to show that the effect we identified in Georgia in the 1970s generalizes to the nation as a whole and to the present day. We argue that these disparities, which cannot be explained by factors extrinsic to the victim’s race and sex, are further evidence that the ultimate question of who lives and dies in our criminal justice system remains unconstitutionally tainted by outdated notions of chivalry and White supremacy.