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Hereby Sentence

Is there racial bias in who gets the death penalty?

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Hereby Sentence

Is there racial bias in who gets the death penalty?

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Is there evidence of racial bias in death penalty sentencing? Many U.S. states allow capital punishment for certain crimes. Some people argue that an “eye for an eye” is a fair punishment, while others believe the death penalty is unfairly imposed.

In this lesson, students analyze almost thirty years’ worth of data summarized in n-way frequency tables and discuss whether they see evidence of racial bias in who receives the death penalty and who doesn’t.

REAL WORLD TAKEAWAYS

  • Specific sets of data on the race of defendants receiving the death penalty can be interpreted to draw opposite conclusions regarding the prevalence of racial bias in sentencing.
  • The race of the victim has been shown to impact the likelihood of receiving the death penalty: In Louisiana, murderers of white victims have received the death penalty three times more frequently than have murderers of black victims.

MATH OBJECTIVES

  • Interpret two-way frequency tables summarizing categorical data
  • Interpret relative frequencies – including joint and conditional frequencies – in the context of the data

Appropriate most times as students are developing conceptual understanding.
Algebra 1
One-Variable Statistics
Algebra 1
One-Variable Statistics
Content Standards
Mathematical Practices

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