Capital Punishment is the lawful taking of a person's life after aconviction of crime. It has caused much controversy and has raiseddifficult legal and ethical issues. Debates about it continue to wage inboth courts and political arenas. There is evidence that the deathsentence is put to disproportionately use to be carried out on the poor,Negro, members of unpopular groups of society. The Death penaltyshould be made against the law because it is a punishment that isracist, sexist, and discriminatory against the poor.Racism is the number one argument in the case against thedeath penalty. In 1972, the Supreme Court halted executions in theUnited States (Wolf 3). They did this mainly beca ...view middle of the document...
This shows that theprobability that a white charged with capital murder would receive thedeath sentence was three in ten; the probability for an AfricanAmerican was close to five in ten. As a percentage of the nations totalpopulation, racial minorities are disproportionately represented ondeath row, especially true for blacks that make up about 40 percent ofthe population (Wolf 14). Some of the strongest discrimination casescan be found more in the Northern states where usually a black personis convicted of rape (Meltsner 75). Negro's convicted of rape are farmore likely to get the death penalty than a term sentence whereaswhite and Latinos convicted of rape are more likely to get a lifesentence rather than a death sentence. No matter what steps in ourgovernment are taken, or what laws are set, there will always be somesort of racial factor in capital punishment sentences unless it is totallyand completely abolished. But racism is not the only flaw in ourgovernments' judgment of punishment to a criminal.Another strong factor, besides racism, is a capital punishmentsentence based on the sex of the defendant. It is proven that men aremore likely to get a death sentence than women. A recent study showsthat almost 99 percent of criminals awaiting death are male (Wolf 14).The Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. publishes a quarterlyDeath Row USA, which not only reports the number of death rowinmates, but also the number of inmates executed since January 1,1976.The latest LDF report shows that between 1976 and July 1, 2001,715 men have been executed but only seven wo...
