987, a study taken in New Jersey showed that of all the executions made that year, fifty percent of the cases involved a black defendant with a white victim, while only twenty-eight percent of the cases involved a white defendant with a black victim. In California, studies indicated that while six percent of those convicted of killing whites got the death penalty, only three percent of those convicted of killing blacks got the death penalty; Since 1976 only four executions involved a white defendant who killed a black victim (Bedau 6). In 1986, studies in Georgia demonstrated that those convicted of killing whites were four times more likely to be sentenced to death than convicted killers of non-whites were. African Americans are only about twelve percent of the United States' population. Of the 3,859 persons executed for a crime since 1930, fifty percent have been black. Also, the application of the death penalty was disproportionate to other minority populations (Bedau 6). It could be argued that minorities do not commit more crime than whites, but rather they are more often punished with the death penalty. In all, only thirty-one of the eighteen thousand executions in this countrys history involved a white person being punished for killing a black person. Sex discrimination is another factor that enters into determining the death sentence. During the ten years from the 1980's to the 1990's, only about one percent of those on the death row were women while a disproportionate number, fifteen- percent, of the criminal homicides were committed by women. Furthermore, research indicates that only thirty-three (twelve of them black) women were executed in the United States since 1930 compared to 3,826 men. Finally, socio-economic class discrimination influences judgments made about the death sentence. Statistics showed that ninety percent of those on the death row are too poor to hire a lawyer. A man named Clinton Duffy, former ...
