{"id":17449,"date":"2013-07-16T16:20:01","date_gmt":"2013-07-16T23:20:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=17449"},"modified":"2013-07-25T23:07:36","modified_gmt":"2013-07-26T06:07:36","slug":"homicides-are-a-lot-more-likely-to-be-justified-if-the-corpse-is-black","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=17449","title":{"rendered":"Homicides Are A Lot More Likely To Be &#8220;Justified&#8221; If The Corpse Is Black"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.metrotrends.org\/2013\/06\/stand-ground-laws-racial-bias\/\">John Roman<\/a> examines the data on race, Stand Your Ground jurisdictions, and justifiable homicide:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Are there are racial disparities in justifiable homicide rulings? Out of 53,000 homicides in the database, 23,000 have a white shooter and a white victim. The shooting is ruled to have been justified in a little more than 2 percent of cases. In states with a SYG law (after enactment), the shooting is ruled to be justified in 3.5 percent of cases, compared to less than 2 percent in non-SYG states. In cases where both the victim and shooter are black, the numbers are almost identical, if slightly lower.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/datatools.metrotrends.org\/charts\/metrodata\/_Blog\/charts\/standyourground\/syg.html\" style=\"border:none;border-style:none;\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"640\" scrolling=\"yes\" width=\"590\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When the shooter and victim are of different races, there are substantial differences in the likelihood a shooting is ruled to be justified. When the shooter is black and the victim is white, the shooting is ruled justified in about 1 percent of cases, and is actually slightly lower in non-SYG states. Between 2005 and 2010, there were 1,210 homicides with a black shooter and a white victim\u2014the shooting was ruled to be justified in just 17 of them (about 1 percent).<\/p>\n<p>The story is completely different when there is a white shooter and a black victim. In the same time period, there were 2,069 shootings where the shooter was white and the victim black. The homicide was ruled to be justified in 236 cases (11 percent). In SYG states, almost 17 percent of white-on-black shootings were ruled to be justified.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, I tested whether these racial disparities remained when we controlled for whether the victim and perpetrator were strangers, the state where the incident occurred, the year of the homicide, and whether the shooting occurred in a SYG state. The racial disparities remain large and significant. In fact, the odds that a white-on-black homicide is ruled to have been justified is more than 11 times the odds a black-on-white shooting is ruled justified.<\/p>\n<p>No dataset will ever be sufficient to prove that race alone explains these disparities. But there are disparities in whether homicides are ruled to be self-defense, and race is clearly an important part of the story.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And from Roman&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.metrotrends.org\/2013\/07\/american-criminal-justice-color-blind-statistics\/\">follow-up post<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Now consider the situation that occurred in the Zimmerman case (and I note that none of these facts are in dispute). When there is a homicide with one shooter and one victim who are strangers, neither is law enforcement, and a firearm is used to kill, a little less than 3 percent of black-on-white homicides are ruled to be justified. When the races are reversed, the percentage of cases that are ruled to be justified climbs to more than 29 percent in non-SYG states and almost 36 percent in SYG states. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;] The answer to the question being asked across America today\u2014would the verdict have been different if Zimmerman and Martin\u2019s races had been reversed\u2014is unknowable. But the available statistical evidence certainly suggests that Zimmerman walked into the courtroom with an advantage that Trayvon Martin would not have had.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>John Roman examines the data on race, Stand Your Ground jurisdictions, and justifiable homicide: Are there are racial disparities in justifiable homicide rulings? Out of 53,000 homicides in the database, 23,000 have a white shooter and a white victim. The &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=17449\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,93],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prisons-and-justice","category-race-racism-and-related-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17449"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17457,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17449\/revisions\/17457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}