Re: Is gender bias in capital punishment a serious problem?



"Michael Snyder" wrote in message news:ed004b54-2eff-4090-8b70-93b9af0c245a@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

http://sentencing.typepad.com/sentencing_law_and_policy/2007/12/should-gender-b.html

Though many justifiably express concerns about racial bias in the
application of the death penalty, the potential gender bias in capital
punishment systems get far less attention. But new horrific killings
in Washington state bring up these interesting gendered issues, as
this new article from the Seattle Times spotlights. Here are
excerpts:

If precedent is an indication, prosecutors may face an additional
challenge should they opt to seek the death penalty against Michele
Kristen Anderson, 29, charged in the killing of six of her relatives
near Carnation Christmas Eve: No woman has been sentenced to die in
Washington state.

Of the 3,300 inmates on death row in the U.S. in the last complete
count, only 49 were women — less than 1.5 percent. "I think jurors,
in general, would have a tougher time imposing the death penalty on a
woman," said Snohomish County Deputy Prosecutor Chris Dickinson, who
in 2003 unsuccessfully sought the death penalty against a woman
convicted of hiring a group of teens to kill her boss.... Since 1977,
nearly 1,100 inmates have been executed in the U.S.; only 11 were
women....

Washington state has executed 77 inmates — all men — since 1904.
Officials Friday could find only two instances in more than a quarter-
century in which Washington prosecutors even asked jurors to sentence
a woman to death....

Death-penalty experts disagree over whether the small number of
women sentenced to die in the U.S. indicates a bias favoring women. In
a 2001 interview, Victor Streib, a law professor at Ohio Northern
University who tracks death-penalty cases against women, said, "It's
like there's something more valuable about women's lives ... Women are
also treated differently when they're victims." But Richard Dieter,
executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in
Washington, D.C., said, "It could be a bias operating or it could just
be there are so few cases of women committing crimes like this. It's a
hard thing to prove one way or another."

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Don't know about capital punishment bias, but I suspect there is a bias. I see it all the time in other crimes, such as child abuse. I have read of cases where a man allows his gf or step mother of his children to abuse his child, he gets charged as well as her and often gets as much or more time than her. But if a mother allows a man, bf or step dad, to abuse her kids, she sometimes gets charged but always seems to get a lesser sentence, even if she participated in the abuse and hiding of the body if the child dies.

Chocolic

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