Capital Punishment and the Legacies of Slavery and Lynching in the United States

2021/03/01 by David L. Rigby, Charles Seguin · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Environmental Science · #Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis #Wildlife Conservation and Criminology Analyses #Crime Patterns and Interventions

paper · pdf · doi:10.1177/00027162211016277

openalex publication_date 2021/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31

Abstract

Capital punishment in the United States is racialized: those convicted of the murder of Whites are much more likely to receive the death penalty than those convicted for the murder of Blacks. Capital punishment is more commonly practiced in places where lynching of Blacks occurred more frequently and in states in which slavery was legal as of 1860. Accordingly, scholars have debated whether capital punishment reflects a legacy of lynching or a legacy of slavery. Our analysis shows that lynching on its own is a significant predictor of contemporary executions, but that once slavery is accounted for, slavery predicts executions, while lynching does not. We argue that slavery’s state-level institutional legacy is central to contemporary capital punishment.

Citations

• Vigilantism, Current Racial Threat, and Death Sentences
• On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough*
• Competing Technologies, Increasing Returns, and Lock-In by Historical Events

Cited by

• Capital punishment in the United States [wikipedia]

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