David C. Baldus
| David C. Baldus | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 23, 1935 Wheeling, West Virginia |
| Died | June 13, 2011 (aged 75) Iowa City, Iowa |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater |
Yale Law School University of Pittsburgh Dartmouth College |
| Known for | "Baldus study" |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Legal studies, Sociology |
| Institutions | University of Iowa |
David Christopher Baldus (June 23, 1935 – June 13, 2011) was a Joseph B. Tye professor of law at the University of Iowa. He held the position from 1969 until his death in 2011. His research focused on law and social science and he conducted extensive research on the death penalty in the United States.
Baldus received his Bachelor of Arts (Government Major) from Dartmouth College in 1957, his Master of Arts (Political Science) from the University of Pittsburgh in 1962. He went on to attend Yale Law School, earning a LL.B. in 1964 and a LL.M. in 1969. He practiced law in Pittsburgh from 1964–68.
He served as a Lieutenant for the Army Security Agency from 1958–59.
In 1983 David C. Baldus, along with Charles A. Pulaski and George Woodworth, published a study examining the presence of racial discrimination in death penalty sentencing. The study analyzed over 2000 murder cases occurring in the state of Georgia in the 1970s. The cases examined by Baldus all occurred between two United States Supreme Court cases involving Georgia: Furman v. Georgia (1972) and McCleskey v. Kemp (1987). The study looked primarily at the race of the victim in each murder case in order to evaluate the presence of racial discrimination in the sentencing process. The study also examined, to a lesser extent, the race of the defendant, in order to evaluate the presence of racial discrimination in the sentencing process. After evaluating the initial findings in the study, Baldus and his colleagues subjected their data to extensive analysis involving 230 variables that could have explained the findings on non-racial grounds. In one such analysis that subjected the data to 39 nonracial variables, Baldus found that defendants accused of killing white victims were 4.3 times more likely to receive the death penalty than defendants accused of killing black victims. This analysis also showed that black defendants were 1.1 times more likely than white defendants to receive the death penalty. Based on these findings, Baldus and his colleagues concluded that a black defendant accused of killing a white victim was more likely than any other type of defendant to receive the death penalty. These results were used by the defense in McCleskey v. Kemp to try to show that racial discrimination had played a role in the sentencing of Warren McCleskey. Two types of statistical studies were used in order to examine these murder trials, the Procedural Reform study and the Charging and Sentencing study.
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