Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI) Senior Fellow Alexander Riley, in his latest hard-hitting opinion commentary, exposes politically correct zealotry against the death penalty. Dr. Riley, a professor of sociology at Bucknell University, attacks the “knee-jerk anti-death penalty position of the woke elites”—and “the language they use to talk about it … mostly ‘racist,’ the coin of the realm in contemporary America.”

In “Racism, Inc. Finds a New Target,” published at the Claremont Institute’s The American Mind, he notes: “The facts are otherwise, and voluminously so. There is no good evidence the death penalty is racist in application. Blacks are not disproportionately likely to receive the death penalty” for racist reasons.

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Dr. Riley also challenges the view that black inmates are more likely than others to suffer “botched executions,” as claimed in a recent National Public Radio story: “The source of the ‘new study’ [stressed in the NPR report] is Reprieve, an anti-death penalty activist group. They define ‘botched execution’ in a manner that few objective observers would find convincing.” In addition:

In addition, “the NPR writer tells us of interviews he had with four workers inside prisons who have assisted at executions … people who might empirically know what they are talking about. Three of those four, NPR is forced to admit, saw nothing that looked like racial bias on this matter. The fourth is ‘spiritual advisor Jeff Hood,’ who claims he has seen blacks restrained more tightly than whites. Hood has no external verification of his claims, and NPR is uninterested in it. It is likewise not made clear how this might contribute to the likelihood of a ‘botched execution’”

In addition to his commentary, recently including pieces on the origins of Hamas and the plagiarism of Harvard president Claudine Gay, Dr. Riley is the author of Toward a Biosocial Science: Evolutionary Theory, Human Nature, and Social Life (Routledge, 2021), a Fulbright Scholar award recipient, and a member of the board of the National Association of Scholars.