(ThyBlackMan.com) The Stanford University Three Strike Project in a report found that Blacks get a much harsher sentence than whites for the same crime. This is hardly the revelation of the ages for many criminal justice reform advocates. They have long contended backed up by a wealth of facts, figures, studies, and reports that race does matter, and matter in a big, infuriating way when it comes to criminal sentencing.
I took immediate action after reading the report. I held a press briefing in front of the Los Angeles Superior Court in Inglewood. I challenged Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman to publicly pledge to fight sentencing disparities between Black and white defendants. DAs have enormous power in determining who to prosecute, even whether to prosecute, and what sentences to ask for when prosecuting. Judges lean heavily on the sentencing recommendation of prosecutors when rendering a decision on a sentence for a defendant following conviction.
The day after my call, I received a call from Hochman. He assured me that his office did not ask for sentences based on race, let alone the race of the defendant, but the nature of the crime. He noted that circumstances in the commission of a crime were not the same even when it appeared the crimes committed by the perpetrators were the same. He cited prior records, convictions, and whether there were enhancements for prior offenses that had to be considered in sentencing. He went further and pledged that he would review any case that I or anyone else brought to his attention in which there was an allegation of racial bias in the sentencing. He would then determine the validity of the allegation.
Fair enough. His rationale, though not a defense, for why there would be possible disparities in a sentence of defendants who committed the same crimes made sense. I’m sure he will follow through on his pledge for review.
However, the blunt reality is that repeated studies both within and without California do provide overwhelming evidence that in some California courts there are glaring sentencing disparities. In almost all cases, the defendant getting the book thrown at them is Black whereas whites are far more likely to walk.
The Stanford Project cited numerous cases of glaring discrepancy in sentencing for a Black defendant versus that slapped on a white defendant for the same crime. It specifically singled out sentencing in San Diego County Courts and L.A. County Courts as among the worst offenders in the racial sentencing double standard. It zeroed in on the sentencing for robberies.
In L.A County, Blacks convicted of robbery received prison sentences that were more than thirty percent longer than whites for the same crime. In San Diego County, Blacks who were convicted of low-level robberies received sentences that were longer than whites. Though it singled out San Diego and L.A. County for criticism, the pattern of apparent discriminatory sentencing held throughout California.
The Stanford Project in tandem with the NAACP Legal defense Fund went on the offensive. It filed legal action to reverse eighteen prison sentences of Blacks on the grounds of sentencing discrimination. The petition was filed in accord with the 2021 state law, the Racial Justice Act, which prohibits discriminatory sentencing. The law aims at reducing racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
“The sad truth is that in California, like so many other states in our country, people of color are serving significantly longer sentences than white people, and that’s for the same offenses with no legitimate justification for those disparities,” noted Legal Defense Fund attorney John Fowler.
The Stanford project took particular care in choosing the eighteen cases for review. The Black offenders had been sentenced to life for low-level crimes in which no one was hurt or even touched. They compared those cases to comparable cases where white offenders received much less harsh sentences.
Hochman conceded that one of the culprits in perpetuating racial sentencing disparity is the judges. He admitted that some judges may well bring their latent or not so latent racial biases in the court chamber when it came time to sentencing a Black defendant. However, he argued that most judges, many of whom were appointed by liberal Democratic governors, were more likely to lean toward liberal even progressive jurisprudence. That rendered the likelihood of racial animus in sentencing less likely.
Finish story here; Stanford Report Shows Blacks Receive Harsher Sentences Than Whites in California Courts.
