Infamous George Zimmerman Prosecutor Puts Disproportionate Number of Black Men on Death Row

Florida is working hard these days to make itself a case study argument in favor of abolishing the death penalty. In a state that has seen more innocent people exonerated from death row than any other in the country, lawmakers last year passed legislation to try to speed up the pace of executions. Last month, Gov. Rick Scott (R) set a dubious record for presiding over more executions in his first term than any governor since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.

Meanwhile, the state continues to ignore US Supreme Court rulings banning the execution of the mentally ill and intellectually disabled. Just last week, the state argued before the Supreme Court that it didn’t want to use accepted scientific principles to comply with the court's ban on executing mentally disabled people because that would spare too many death row residents, a move that would be "inconsistent with Florida’s purposes." And now comes the news the state's most notorious prosecutor has not only sent a disproportionate number of felons to death row, but a disproportionate number of African-Americans, once again raising the troubling issue of racial disparities in the state's capital punishment system.

Angela Corey is the elected state attorney for the Fourth Judicial Circuit. She has been in the national spotlight ever since Scott tapped her to handle the prosecution of George Zimmerman. According to a new analysis by the Florida Times-Union, Corey has sent 21 people to death row since 2009, more than any other prosecutor in the state. That figure accounts for 25 percent of all death sentences in the entire state since 2009, even though Corey's jurisdiction represents only 5 to 6 percent of the population and accounts for 8 percent of Florida's murders. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, of the 21 men Corey's office has sent to death row, 66 percent are African-American, even though blacks make up only 16 percent of the state's population and a quarter of the population of the Fourth Judicial District where Corey serves. (Corey didn't respond to the Times-Union's requests for comment, nor did her office reply an inquiry from Mother Jones.)

Those figures aren't especially surprising given the state's history. Over and over again, task forces have examined the state's capital punishment system and found that racial biases are endemic. In 2000, even the administration of Gov. Jeb Bush (R), which studied the issue, had to concede that the state had never executed a white person for killing a black victim, and earlier studies found that a defendant was 3.4 times more likely to face a death sentence if the victim was white.

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http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/03/angela-corey-florida-death-row