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Most murders in the USA involve perpetrators and victims of the same race, yet nearly 200 African Americans have been executed for the murder of white victims --15 times as many as the number of whites put to death for killing blacks, and at least twice as many as the number of blacks executed for the murder of other blacks.

One reason for this statistic is that murderers are much more likely to get the death penalty if they kill a stranger rather than an immediate member of their family or a "friend". The latter are often considered "crimes of passion" and have a lower penalty (for various reasons -- the killer may feel terrible remorse from a killing while drunk, and they may not be viewed as someone who will "kill again".) It is also the fact that many of these black killers have been dangerous low-life scumbags with little regard to human life. Killing a few people while robbing a convenience store, with a long criminal record, will get you executed regardless of your race.

I have supported capital punishment since I've been old enough to understand it - UNTIL RECENTLY.

I changed my mind, not because of the screwball reasoning in this article, but because we're finding so many people on death row who are innocent. (They're found to be innocent through DNA testing not available when the murders occured.)

On top of this, when inmates are found to be innocent, it frequently turns out that either the police completely ignored evidence that didn't support their conclusion, or they went so far as to fabricate evidence.

In addition, the death penalty at this point is used so infrequently, and takes so long for the penalty to be imposed, that it no longer functions as a deterrent. If the would-be killer even considers the penalty, they can easily conclude that, I probably won't get caught, if I do get caught, there's a good chance I can get off, if I don't get off, I probably won't get the death penalty, and if I do get sentenced to death, it'll take 'em 18 years to execute me!

But the overriding factor for me is the number of people found to be wrongly convicted. How many innocent people are we willing to execute in order to have a death penalty?

There was an article on the murder of a black son in a South Central Los Angeles family by Julie Leovy in this past Saturday's Los Angeles Times. Its always amazing how the murderer-loving crowd repeatedly raises up the discredited canard of how black murderers are XXX times more likely to be executed than white murderers. As if the race of the killer ever made a difference to the victims: they're still dead. I'd love for liberals to explain to this family why the killer(s) of their child should be given an exemption from Death Row simply because of their skin color. My goodness, don't the lives of innocent and law-abiding people count for anything? Apparently not to that great champion of human rights, Amnesty International. It'll come as a great comfort to that family in South Central, that thanks to the bleeding-heart crowd's insistence upon political correctness in the administration of the death penalty, their loved one's murderer will never find justice in this world.