Running the numbers

Stephanie Cecere, editor-in-chief of the Houston Law Review, will enter her final year at the University of Houston Law Center this fall. She expects excitement about her publication to pick up about the same time. That's when the journal will publish an article by Scott Phillips, a professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Denver.  After studying Harris County death penalty statistics, he found that -- all other factors, such as the type of crime committed, being equal -- a black defendant is more likely to be sentenced to death than a white defendant in Harris County. Already, critics have begun to question Phillips' article, which was described in a column appearing on The New York Times Web site on April 29 with a link to a draft. The column quotes Jon Sorensen, a professor of justice studies at Prairie View A&M University in Texas, as questioning the study's methodology. Phillips focused on statistics from prosecutions that occurred between 1992 to 1999. We'd like to know what Harris county attorneys who have been on both sides of the criminal justice system -- prosecuting and defending -- believe a careful analysis of stats from more recent years would show.
-- Miriam Rozen