Race And Homicide In Nineteenth-Century California

Epilogue: Prison, Homicide Rates, and Justice

97 Epilogue Prison, Homicide Rates, and Justice To Lincoln the most important idea that the law represented was the idea of fairness. Justice carries a pair of scales that are evenly balanced. —Arthur L. Goodhart A basic legal dictum states that the punishment should fit the crime. The data presented indicate that this was not necessarily true, at least for nonwhite defendants . Penal control, of course, is considered to be the strongest form of social sanction used to correct“deviant”behavior.1 The enforcement of norms tends to divide society between those who are“respectable”and those who fail to meet the behavioral standards set by the majority.Those perceived as deviant are more likely to be disciplined. Discipline takes the form of incarceration for short periods of time at the very minimum, life sentences for more serious offenses, and execution for the most extreme crimes. Incarceration, of course, proved to be the most common method of punishment.2 The four case studies discussed above have provided some measure of how the criminal justice system treated defendants , but what were the consequences of incarceration in San Quentin and Folsom prisons? During the nineteenth century, California’s criminal justice systems imprisoned 1,901 individuals for murder and manslaughter (Table 5.1). Authorities sentenced only 15 women to prison for such crimes; as noted earlier, homicide in California had been mostly a male endeavor. White inmates accounted for 68.5 percent of the total, followed by Hispanics, Chinese, Indians, and blacks, with 13.8, 9.1, 7.0, and 1.6 percent, respectively. San Francisco, with 313 inmates, sent the most prisoners convicted of murder and manslaughter, while Los Angeles contributed 136. With 295 inmates, the seven California counties studied represented about 15.5 percent of the prison population.3 Sacramento, with 80, contributed the highest number of inmates, followed by Calaveras,Tuolumne, San Diego, San Joaquin, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obispo, with 48, 45, 40, 40, 24, and 18, respectively . Chinese inmates had the highest life sentence rates of any group among the aggregate prison population, with 46 percent of all Chinese inmates receiving life sentences. Among Indian inmates, this figure was 27 percent; among whites, 98 Race and Homicide 26 percent; and among Hispanics, 19 percent. Of the fifty-two Chinese inmates sentenced from San Francisco, 60 percent received life sentences (thirty-one cases). Other counties with high life sentence rates for Chinese included Calaveras, Fresno, Sacramento, Santa Clara, and San Joaquin, with 100, 86, 58, 60, and 50 percent, respectively (twenty-three cases). These figures are quite remarkable , especially since Chinese defendants usually had lawyers at the beginning of the legal process. What explains such dramatic figures? The most logical explanation would be racial prejudice. For example, life sentence rates for white inmates were 20 percent lower, and most of these cases involved white victims. The same applies to Indians, for whom the rate was 19 percent lower, though many of the victims were white. In cases involving Chinese accused of homicide the victims were almost always Chinese as well. It seems odd that judges and juries would sentence Chinese defendants to life for killing other Chinese . It appears, especially in San Francisco, Sacramento, Fresno, and Calaveras Counties, that the prosecutors may have used life sentences as a way to get these Chinese“deviants”off the streets. In the counties studied, seven Indian defendants received life sentences for killing three white and four Indian victims. Judges sentenced twenty-eight white defendants to life for killing one Indian and twenty-seven whites. Nine Hispanics received life sentences for killing one Indian, four whites, and four Hispanics. Sacramento County officials sentenced one black defendant to life in prison for killing a black male victim. Fourteen Chinese received life sentences; all victims were Chinese.4 Sixteen defendants were sentenced to death for killing victims from another race. Eight Indians received the death penalty for killing whites, and six of them ended up on the gallows. A judge declared Gabriel Cuayo insane, and José de Jesus had table 5.1 Prison Population by Race, 1850–1900 Race Number Percentage White 1,303 68.5 Hispanic 263 13.8 Indian 132 7.0 Chinese 173 9.1 Black 30 1.6 Totals 1,901 100.0 Sources: San Quentin and Folsom prison registers, 1850–1900. Epilogue 99 his sentence commuted to life in prison. Sheriffs executed José del Carme, Filisario Alipas...