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I know I will be flamed on this board, but I have on my fire retartdent gear on so I am ready.

I am a firm believer in the death penalty in principle, but in reality I find it extremely unfair. I don't have a problem with the number of blacks on death row unfair, if they deserved it, I find the descrepancy of numbers of whites on deathrow the problem.

If we truly have a color-blind, and "wallet"-blind justice system, why are the descrepancies there? Why is a poor person more likely to get on death row than a rich person.

I don't find the total #'s disturbing, I just think it should be more across the board. Why did the DA of California even hesitate to charge Scott Peterson with a Capital offense? Because of the chance of not getting a good looking white man found guilty. Its a proven fact in some jurisdictions that you have a better chance of a guilty verdict if you take out the capital punishment. Why? Look at OJ. Until it is either enforced across the board in the states where it is a law, I have problems with it.

I hope you all understand my point, I am not against the death penalty at all, I just think it has become to unfair to have in a "fair" judicial system.

My only two concerns in the death penalty issue are that as many of those who deserve the death penalty as possible actually receive it-- legally, justly...and promptly AND that those who do NOT deserve the death penalty do NOT recive it...ever. The fact that members of one race receive the death penalty more than those of another does bother me somewhat, but as long as each person who receives the death penalty deserves it, then what is the gripe? As suggested above, one solution is to work to impose the death penalty on more of those who deserve it, rather than less.
A final point..... the death penalty is easy to avoid..simply do not commit pre-meditated murder.

Human justice by definition, will never be perfect. There always be mistakes and that will result at times in the appearance of inequitable sentencing. If you want justice to be perfect, then no one will ever get punished for the crime in question. Amnesty International and other liberal groups aim for an impossible ideal that can never be achieved in practice. An insistence upon absolute fairness would mean letting many murderers would escape justice. Life is a series of trade-offs and realizing that justice will never be perfectly administered, is the key to improving it. If the Left has a problem with the way the death penalty is carried out in America, the answer lies in making it more equitable, not in abolishing it. Making our justice system fairer will satisfy most people but it will never be acceptable to the likes of Amnesty International for whom the American system of justice will never be good enough, no matter how sensible the balance it strikes between punishing the guilty and protecting the rights of those accused of committing a crime.