proper time. No legal system, guided as it must be by human judgment, can eliminate the possibility of errors. In the case of the death penalty, errors are irreversible. Is the death penalty applied arbitrarily or discriminatorily? In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court in effect called a moratorium on executions by finding (in Furman v. Georgia) that capital punishment as then administered was unconstitutional because of the arbitrary and discriminatory way in which it was applied. Juries had been free to sentence defendants without guidelines that ensured rational and uniform decisions. As a result, the death penalty was applied much more frequently to African American defendants than others and there were no uniform standards for what cases justified execution. The Court did not rule out the death penalty as such. Later, the Court ruled that mandatory sentences were unacceptable because moral standards require room for mercy and individual considerations. The Court said that states could not automatically execute defendants for certain crimes as a way of eliminating arbitrary and discriminatory patterns. Instead, the Court required "guided discretion" that would leave room for individual considerations, yet allow for uniform and rational standards. New death penalty laws were designed in many states with these guidelines in mind. By the mid-1970s, the death penalty had been reinstated. Have these new procedures caused courts to apply the death penalty without regard to race, ethnicity or gender? Is it now applied rationally, to the most dangerous and most "deserving"? Is it applied uniformly from area to area? In fact, the new sentencing patterns have not significantly changed from earlier, pre-Furman patterns. The death penalty continues to be applied in a discriminatory way. Death row continues to hold a disproportionate number of the poor, the Black, the mentally handicapped and the disturbed. The death penalty is still applied capricio...
