Criminal Justice
Student’s Name
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Criminal Justice
I would use both the victim-offender dyad and the differences between discrimination and disparity to make my case. I the case of the victim-offender dyad, I would argue that when all other factors are kept constant, homicides incidents that involve people of color or o-white offenders have a higher probability of being cleared with arrest or sentencing than white people regardless of what race the victim belonged to.
This is because non-whites offenders are perceived as criminals and a huge threat to society, and as a result, law enforcers are more willing to invest their time ad dig deeper in pursuit of such offenders (Ashworth, 2015). Three might be much pressure for homicides crimes than lesser crimes. This is because cases related to homicides receive more attention from the media or the public.
The disparity is a difference in outcome or treatment that is not based on any intentional prejudice or bias. On the other hand, discrimination is the different treatment of individuals because of irrelevant standards such as social class, gender, and, more importantly, race. In this case, I would argue that my client sentencing was based on his color. This is because mom-white offenders tend to receive harsh sentencing than white offenders in the same situation. In this case, the hasty decision to sentence my client to death might have been influenced by the aforementioned reasons.
Case Study
Strauder V. West Virginia
On the 20th of October, the year 1879, an African American man was charged with murder and convicted by a juror made up of white people. He later petitioned, claiming that a black ma cannot have equal court hearing as a white man in a juror full of white people in the State of West Virginia (Levinson, 2018). It was then considered that the sentencing was null, void ad unconstitutional; thus, the sentencing was overruled.
References
Ashworth, A. (2015). Sentencing and criminal justice. Cambridge University Press.
Levinson, S. V. (2018). Why Strauder v. West Virginia Is the Most Important Single Source of Insight on the Tensions Contained Within the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Saint Louis University Law Journal, 62(3), 6.