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Democracy in the Courts

Democracy in the Courts. Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect. Milgram Experiment: 90%+ of Americans are psychopaths willing to murder under orders Stanford Prison Experiment: anyone can become a sadist in 2 days How explain evil? Dispositional: Bad Apples Environmental: Bad Barrels

dennis-delacruz
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Democracy in the Courts

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  1. Democracy in the Courts

  2. Philip Zimbardo, The Lucifer Effect • Milgram Experiment: 90%+ of Americans are psychopaths willing to murder under orders • Stanford Prison Experiment: anyone can become a sadist in 2 days • How explain evil? • Dispositional: Bad Apples • Environmental: Bad Barrels • Systemic: Legal, political, economic, cultural framework of power: Bad Barrel Makers • Institutionalized racism

  3. Jim Crow Criminal System • Sam Hose • Convict lease system • “the live nigger is worth more than the dead one” • “If a nigger kills a white man, that’s murder. If a white man kills a nigger, that’s justifiable homicide. If a nigger kills a nigger, that’s one less nigger.” • “Whose nigger are you?”

  4. SC Gov Cole Blease on commutating death sentence (1913) • “This defendant was convicted of killing another negro. I am naturally against electrocuting or hanging one negro for killing another, because, if a man had two fine mules running loose in a lot and one went mad and kicked and killed the other he certainly would not take his gun and shoot the other mule, but would take that mule and work it and try to get another mule; therefore, I believe that when one negro kills another, that he should be put in the Penitentiary and made to work for the State.”

  5. Southern Strategy • Kevin Phillips, Nixon strategist and author of The Emerging Republican Majority(1969), interview, New York Times, May 17, 1970 • From now on, the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don’t need any more than that…but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act. The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South, the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans. That’s where the votes are. Without that prodding from the blacks, the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats.

  6. Lee Atwater (strategist for Reagan + Bush I; mentor to Karl Rove) • “Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now [that] you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites. And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.' “

  7. The New Jim Crow • 60% of the prison and jail population is black and Hispanic • Blacks and Hispanics are 29.9% of the population •  legal discrimination: voting, welfare, housing, jobs

  8. Death Penalty • Yes: Nigeria (last 2001; sodomy), China (1,010 in 2006), Iran (177 in 2006), US (53), Russia (moratorium since 1996) • No: EU, Britain (1998; last 1964), Mexico (2005; last 1937) • Prison Population (2007) • Nigeria: 39, 438; 30/ 100,000 (Juveniles: 2.0%) • China: 1.5 million; 119/ 100,000 (1.4%) • Britain: 87,000; 148/ 100,000 (3%) • Mexico: 216, 290; 198/ 100,000 (N/A) • Iran: 150, 321; 212/ 100,000 (1.5%) • Russia: 889, 598; 628/ 100,000 (2.5%) • US: 2.2 mil; 750/ 100,000 (0.4%) • North Korea: unknown (everyone); estimated 200,000 political prisoners 900+/ 100,000

  9. "In 82% of the studies [reviewed], race of the victim was found to influence the likelihood of being charged with capital murder or receiving the death penalty, i.e., those who murdered whites were found more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks."- United States General Accounting Office, Death Penalty Sentencing, February 1990 • Nationally, over 80% of murder victims in cases resulting in an execution were White, even though only 50% of murder victims generally are White • 96% of states conducting reviews of race and the death penalty have discovered a pattern of either race-of-victim or race-of-defendant discrimination, or both • 98% of the Chief district attorneys in death penalty states are White • Jury selection procedures: 1986 Batson v. Kentucky • A Philadelphia study found that Blacks received the death penalty at a 38% higher rate than others when comparing similar defendants and similar crimes • A North Carolina study found that the odds of receiving a death sentence rose by 3.5 times among those defendants whose victims were White • Since 1976, executions: White Defendant / Black Victim (15)Black Defendant / White Victim (223)

  10. 1976-2005: White on Black homicides: 11,262 • Executions: 15/11262= .1331% ‘76-’05: Black on White homicides: 29,437 (2.6 times likelihood) • Executions: 223/29437= .7575% (5.69 times likelihood) From 1976 to 2005 -- • * 86% of white victims were killed by whites • * 94% of black victims were killed by blacks

  11. Prison-Industrial Complex • Interest groups + organizations (prison guard unions, construction companies, and surveillance technology vendors) more concerned with making profits than actually rehabilitating criminals or reducing crime rates • 2006: nationwide $60 Billion • 2001: Prisons: States avg. $22,650/inmate/year; Federal $22,632 • Education: $1,315/resident; Prisons: $104/Resident

  12.  Privatization of prisons (264 facilities, 99,000 adults)

  13. Prisoners are counted in census for district where imprisoned not in home district E.g. 60 percent of Illinois's prisoners come from Cook County, though only 1 percent are incarcerated there Percent population disenfranchised

  14. “Promissory Notes” • Judicial candidates asked to fill out questionnaires on their beliefs • Candidates who refused basis for fundraising against • E.g. Question 1: "Are you a born again Christian? Please give your testimony." • Agree/Disagree w/ statement: "God's Laws or Natural Laws have a high[er] authority than laws enacted by the United States Congress or the Idaho Legislature" • Republican Party of Minnesota v. White: 1st Amendment right to ask • “Three of four Americans already believe that campaign contributions to judges affect the outcome of cases. Even worse, more than 25 percent of state judges agree.”

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