ade up 12 percent of the population, but 48 percent of the prison population and 55.5 percent of those on death row are black. Mccleskey v, Georgia dealt with this issue of capital punishment being sentenced disparately in a racially manor violating the 8th and 14th Amendments. A statistical data on Georgias capital punishment was utilized and the court rejected this claim stating: There was no evidence. There was no evidence legislators adopted or maintained capital punishment for racially discriminatory purposes. There was no merit that the sentence was racially imposed. 28 A 1993 study shows 2,716 prisoners in America under the sentence of death, 1,566 are white 1,109 are black 206 are Hispanic. 29 Not one time during the years of 1977-1993 has there been more blacks executed in a year then whites. 30 In fact only 38% of the blacks are executed in comparison to 56% of whites. 31 There are statistics that support the death penalty being handed down for the murder of whites. 85% of victims in death penalty cases are white considering that blacks account for over 50% of the murdered victims and only 12% of murders are sentenced to death for killing a black. 32 These figures far from show the discriminatory status. Race again played a decisive role in who lives and who dies in the research of 1998. Of the 68 executions this year, only 11 (16%) involved the murder of a black victim, even though blacks are the victims in 50% of all murders. The Death Penalty Information Center released a report based on an exhaustive statistical study of capital cases in Philadelphia, which showed that for similar crimes the odds of blacks receiving the death penalty were four times greater than for any other defendants. The report also revealed that 98% of the nation's chief district attorneys responsible for death penalty decisions are white, while only 1% are African American. Many members of the Congressional Black Caucus joined in condemning the disc...
