Personhood and a Trickle Up Model in Capital Punishment Decisions

In one of my sociology classes we have recently been looking at race and crime in the United States. While we have already discussed the racial disparities in prison populations, I would like to focus on the impacts of race on death sentence decisions. By drawing specifically from Cassia Spohn’s work I believe we can make connections to the discussions of racialized space presented by Razack, as well as realize the importance of Spade’s notion of "trickle up social justice". 

In the US, capital punishment decisions are understood to be “characterized by systemic racial discrimination” (Spohn 183). This systemic racism is evident when we look at who is most likely to be sentenced to death. Spohn demonstrates that the whiteness of the victim influences capital decisions. The race of the victim as white has a strong impact on the decision to seek the death penalty and the jury’s decision to impose it (Spohn 183). In sum Spohn’s work on capital punishments reveals that “blacks accused of murdering whites are substantially more likely than any other race-of-defendant/race-of-victim category to be charged with capital crime and sentenced to death” (185).

I first want to consider this “victim-based racial discrimination” (Spohn 184) in relation to Razack’s exploration of space and personhood. As Razack discusses, the white male bodies of George's murderers are understood to belong to a realm of justice and respectability (Razack 95). Through their adventures past the realm of justice and into the space of the unrespectable and racialized, the white "in control"citizen is formed (Razack 95).  I think that this notion of subject making and personhood is important when considering the impact of the whiteness of homicide victims on the offenders likelihood to be sentenced to death. We can understand the white victim as deserving this most severe form of punishment because they belong to a space of justice. In a colonial society the white personhood is fully realized; therefore the most extreme “justice” must be applied to these bodies. Their personhood is valued and, unlike George’s, the enormity of their violence is easily recognized. In the space of whiteness and personhood it is easier to realize violence and, accordingly, to hand out punishment to those who perpetrate that violence.

If we continue to consider Razack's notion of spaces, we come to realize the racialized perpetrator belongs to a space of inherent violence and injustice. The implications of this is that violence done to bodies of those in radicalized spaces cannot be fully realized (Razack 93). So while it is because of a racist understanding of personhood that we value the lives of whites and recognize their violence, our conceptions of racialized bodies belonging to violent spaces prevents us from realizing the enormity of the harm of capital punishment. It is black men whose life chances are being abruptly stripped away based on these racist understandings of personhood. This is why I believe we need to consider a "trickle up social justice" model. Spade argues that this social justice model involves focusing on the lives of the most marginalized in society, those whose life chances are most harmed, to improve the lives of all affected by such an issue as benefits trickle up the ladder of oppressed persons. If we choose only to focus on white inmates or white prisoners on death row, we risk leaving behind the most marginalized. If capital punishment is harming the life chances of black men particularly, if the criminal justice system is not able to realize the violence of capital punishment on these bodies, then efforts for re-trials or to remove the death sentence must be focused on the experiences of black men to create meaningful change. 

Spohn, Cassia. "Racial Disparities in Prosecution, Sentencing, and Punishment." In The Oxford Handbook Of Ethnicity, Crime, And Immigration. 2014. Print.