miko, premeditated murdr is premeditated murder. No matter whether you kill a white innocent or a black gangmember.
On a sidenote, I had to show Rip and Toad I'm not a Republican. I oppose the death penalty as it is in the US. 'Reasonable doubt' isn't good enough when it comes to taking an action that cannot be reversed. So what I did was browse two or three web sites after using 'execution USA innocent' as a search criterion.
And look what I come up with.
On a serious note; a 15 to 1 discrepancy does indicate prejudism in the system. Perhaps much of it can be explained the way you do, but I'm pretty sure that isn't all there is to it - not with the racist history the US has. And I should say that DK was just as bad back in its days - I mean we had slaves and stuff in the West Indies. We set them free eventually, but still. Stupid French and Brits were reluctant to do so and had a revolution on their hands.
Anyway, I did a new search, bit more thorough. Seems like there is no clear evidence either way.
One report, “Justice on Trial: Racial Disparities in the American Criminal Justice System,” finds the following:
"that minorities in the US face discriminatory treatment at every stage of the judicial process, from arrest to incarceration. The 94-page report was issued by the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights based in Washington DC. Its findings show that blacks, Hispanics and other minorities face unfair targeting by police and other law enforcement officials, racially biased charging and plea bargaining decisions by prosecutors and discriminatory sentencing by judges."
On the other hand, a statistician says that when everything is taken into consideration (prior offences, area etc) then there is no cultural or racial bias.
http://www.mugu.com/cgi-bin/Upstream/Issues/race/justice.htmlIt says about the studies done on the subject:
"The bulk of the evidence amassed since then on justice system bias is far less conclusive. Plenty of studies exist showing no bias in arrest, prosecution, adjudication, and sentencing. While plenty also exist that show possible evidence of bias, the general consensus among criminologists is that the evidence is not strong"
and
"Racial bias studies never completely take into account all of the legitimate factors that determine how a ease is handled, Consequently, these unmeasured factors might explain a racial disparity if the factors are ones on which the races differ. Given the small disparity in the first place, such unmeasured factors become potentially important.
Existing racial bias studies share another limitation. They do not tell us how all or even most black defendants in the United States are handled at each of the major stages of the justice system, Instead, they tell us how blacks are treated at a single stage, or in one jurisdiction, or for particular offenses."
That site says that it is: "These pages are a home for the intellectually heterodox, the politically incorrect and other independent thinkers. A home for outlaws".
Gonna check it out to see whether it is racially biased itself. OTOH, it has cool Devils Dictionary quotes all over the place, and quotes from Shakespeare and stuff, so can't be all bad
