A major known policy in Texas is that a person can only be sentenced to death, if and only if prosecutors can show that he or she poses a future danger to society. However, that was clearly not the case for Duane Buck, who is a black man from Texas. Duane was found guilty for killing his ex-girlfriend and a man beside her. He was clearly wrong for doing it and most definitely should be punished. But when Buck's defense lawyer called a psychologist, and the psychologist testified that race plays a huge factor in whether or not they should use the death penalty, it definitely raised a huge red flag in how the death penalty is distinguished. Duane was executed in 1995.
Even though Duane's case happened more than twenty years ago, this issue is still extremely prominent today. I have always questioned why people treat individuals differently based off of the pigment of their skin, especially in a topic as big as the death penalty. I think that the death penalty is too big of a consequence to just use on an individual that committed a single murder. It amazes me how this case happened several years ago and our society has remained the same as it was in 1995. The death penalty is already a huge controversy as of whether it should be used or not in the first place, but now we have to worry about if it's being used to discriminate another race.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/opinion/sunday/race-and-the-death-penalty-in-texas.html?ref=opinion
Editorial Board. "Race and the Death Penalty in Texas." Editorial. New York
Times 2 Apr. 2016: n. pag. Print.
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