The State of Alabama executed Nathaniel Woods tonight for a crime involving white victims. A stunning 84% of Alabama executions in the modern era have been carried out for crimes involving white victims even though only 20% of the state's homicide victims are white.
This dramatic disparity in Alabama's death penalty reflects a longstanding problem of racial bias in the administration of capital punishment. eji.org/news/nathaniel…
There is no dispute that Nathaniel Woods, who was black, did not kill any of the three victims in this case, all of whom are white. At the time of Mr. Woods’s trial, every elected prosecutor in the state of Alabama was white except one.
The persistent problem of racial discrimination in jury selection aggravates the racial bias. Black people were underrepresented at Mr. Woods’s trial after prosecutors excluded every qualified black prospective juror except two in a majority black county.
The jury’s 10-2 verdict for death would have spared Mr. Woods’s life in most states because death verdicts are generally required to be unanimous, but not in Alabama.
Alabama has no state-funded system for providing lawyers to death row prisoners and Mr. Woods was one of dozens of indigent people who had not been able to obtain adequate legal assistance at critical stages of the process.
Mr. Woods’s appellate lawyer abandoned his case on direct appeal, forfeiting critically important review of the issues presented. Many death row prisoners remain unrepresented or underrepresented in Alabama today.
