Alabama--50 (43 percent) of their 117 death row inmates are black; blacks make up only 26 percent of the state's population.

Louisiana--28 (68 percent) of their 41 death row inmates are black; blacks make up only 25 percent of the state's population.

Mississippi--31 (58 percent) of their 52 death row inmates are black; blacks make up only 36 percent of the state's population.

Illinois--97 (60 percent) of their 162 death row inmates are black; blacks make up only 15 percent of the state's population.

Maryland--11 (80 percent) of their 14 death row inmates are black; blacks make up only 25 percent of the state's population.

New Jersey--5 (56 percent) of their nine death row inmates are black; blacks make up only 15 percent of the state's population.

Ohio--62 (47 percent) of their 127 death row inmates are black; blacks make up only 10 percent of the state's population.

Pennsylvania--101 (60 percent) of their 168 death row inmates are black; blacks make up only 10 percent of the state's population.

And while I don't have the figures of the minority population for the two states with the country's largest death row populations, both have significantly high minority populations of condemned men.

In California 215 (56 percent) of the 380 death row inmates are non-white, and in Texas 203 (56 percent) of their 363 death row inmates are non-white.

However, statistics on the race of the offender alone do not necessarily prove bias, given that roughly 50 percent of those arrested for murder are black. Of far more significance are the racial disparities revealed by an examination of the race of the murder victim in cases where the death penalty is imposed. The 227 prisoners executed between 1976 (when the death penalty was reinstated by the courts) and January 1994 had been convicted of killing 302 victims. Of these victims 255 were white and only 47 were black or of another minority group. While 86 black or ethnic minority prisoners have been executed for murdering white victims, only two white murderers have been executed for the murder of a non-white--one for the murder of a black man and one for the murder of an Asian woman.

A study done in the late 1970s by William Bowers and Glenn Pierce, both of Northeastern University, compared statistics on all criminal homicides and death sentences imposed in Florida, Georgia, Texas and Ohio. Death sentences in these four states accounted for 70 percent of all the death sentences imposed nationally at that time. They found that far more killers of whites than killers of blacks were sentenced to death. They also found that, although most killers of whites were white, blacks who killed whites were proportionately more likely to receive the death sentence than any other group.

In Florida and Texas, for example, blacks who killed whites were, respectively, five and six times more likely to be sentenced to death than whites who killed whites. And among black offenders in Florida, those who killed whites were 40 times more likely to get the death penalty than those who killed blacks. No white offender in Florida had ever been sentenced to death for killing a black person up through the period studied (a white man sentenced to death in Florida in 1980 for killing a black woman was the first white person in that state to be sentenced to death for the murder of a sole black person--and he has yet to be executed). An exhaustive study conducted in the early 1980s by Professor David Baldus sought to discover why killers of white victims in Georgia had received the death penalty approximately 11 times more often than killers of black victims. He found that the two most significant points affecting the likelihood of an eventual death sentence were the prosecutor's decisions on whether or not to permit plea bargains and whether or not to seek a death sentence after a murder conviction. Black victim cases were far more likely than others to have their charges reduced. Black defendants with white victims were less likely to have their charges reduced and more likely than others, upon conviction of murder, to receive the death penalty.

Baldus noted that prosecutors had sought the death penalty in only 40 percent of the cases where defendants were convicted of a capital crime--the others received automatic life sentences without a penalty hearing. But perhaps the most disturbing finding was that, although cases with white victims tended to be more aggravated in general, the levels of aggravation in crimes involving black victims had to be substantially higher before prosecutors would seek the death penalty. Thus the overall disparities in death sentencing were due more to the prosecutor's charging and sentencing recommendations than to any jury sentencing decisions.

In areas with a large white majority population that strongly supports the use of capital punishment, there is inevitably more pressure on prosecutors to seek the death penalty in cases with white victims than in those with black victims or victims from other minorities. Also, in general, there is more community outrage, publicity and public pressure when the murder victim comes from a middle class background.

In 1987 the United States Supreme Court examined the issue of racial discrimination in the death penalty, in the case of McCleskey v Kemp, to determine if Georgia's capital punishment system violated the Equal Prosecution Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The court, by a narrow five to four majority, concluded that statistics alone do not prove that race entered into any capital sentencing decision in any one particular case.

The majority indicated that the arguments should be presented to the individual state legislative bodies, for it is their responsibility, not the court's, to determine the appropriate punishment for particular crimes. They noted that 'despite McCleskey's wide ranging arguments that basically challenge the validity of capital punishment in our multi-racial society, the only question before us is whether in his case... the law of Georgia was properly applied.' In a dissenting opinion, justice John Paul Stevens noted, 'The court's decision appears to be based on a fear that acceptance of McCleskey's claim would sound the death knell for capital punishment... If society were indeed forced to choose between a racially discriminatory death penalty (one that provides heightened protection against murder "for whites only") and no death penalty at all, the choice mandated by the Constitution would be plain.'

Following the McCleskey ruling a Congressional bill entitled the 'Racial Justice Act' was drafted. The bill would forbid 'racially disproportionate capital sentencing' and would outlaw death sentences found to have been imposed in a racially discriminatory manner. It was debated and defeated in the Senate by a vote of 52 to 35 in 1988. In subsequent years this same bill has been consistently defeated on every occasion that it has come up for a vote.

We cannot simply continue to live with the illusion that capital punishment works in the perfect unbiased manner that we desire.

While we may wish otherwise, race has an indisputable and integral part in our capital punishment system. One of the most telling statistics is that six of every 11 defendants convicted of killing a white person would not have received the death penalty if their victims had been black. These figures may vary from state to state, but the underlying conclusion remains the same: the taking of a white life is worth greater punishment than the taking of a black life. Is this the kind of system that we want? It is clearly time to abolish the death penalty.

Dear Michael

Birmingham Six free after 15 years: they would all be dead if there was capital punishment

When the state kills one person, it is preparing the killing of two. When it kills two, it is preparing the way to kill three. And with three, it prepares to get ready to kill many. Perhaps these changes are not arithmetic; perhaps they are geometric. Or perhaps they are without a mathematical pattern at all. But what is clear is that the death of one leads to the death of many by hook or by crook.

Those who favoured the Vietnam War argued by analogy with a line of upright dominoes. We may put forward a domino theory of the death penalty. One domino knocks over another, and then another and another in a clattering series of collapses, until none are left standing. The death penalty is the first domino. It is followed by another. This second domino might be, let us say, the more frequent informal shoot outs by the police. A third might be a public health disaster where certain populations are deliberately left to die. A fourth might be a massacre for purposes of terrorising a city or a region. A fifth might be the slow enervation of wage reductions and unemployment that inescapably leads to fatal wasting away. Life is devalued.

We might also compare the death penalty to the thin edge of a wedge. A small tap with the hammer is enough to lodge that thin edge into the thick section of the toughest tree trunk. Another blow of the hammer finds a space among the fibres, and a third blow widens it. Afterwards it is only a question of the number of blows from the sledge required to split the trunk in twain. The death of one leads to the death of many.

In Hitler's Germany the Reichstag Fire Decree of 1933 imposing the death penalty led to others, like the Law for the Protection of German Blood, the Law on Dangerous Habitual Criminals, or the Decree on Asocial Elements which culminated in the death camps of the 1940s. The wedge widened, from the death of one, to a genocide, all in a decade.

Looking at the US states which have reinstituted the death penalty, can we not see that subsequent to the death penalty is the growth of other forms of social morbidity--gang violence, family violence, police violence, tuberculosis, Aids?

The US Congress is about to make a mighty turn of the screw as it begins hearings on the expansion of the Federal Death Penalty. They are considering 50 new capital offences.

Michael, what I am suggesting is that your 'volunteering' for a Connecticut execution of the death penalty may or may not assuage the anger or soften the grief of the relatives of Baribeault, Stavinsky, Shelley and Brunais, but that it would certainly encourage authorities of all kinds to impose order by means of the myriad deaths of others. Even if your execution brought relief to the grief struck, it would inevitably lead to further predictable and unpredictable violences.

The state's brief at the Supreme Court of Connecticut which concerned your case proposed a truly loathsome sentiment. 'When we lose the collective "nerve" to act, however unpleasant the action required, we sow the seeds of anarchy.' This notion is profoundly foul. It is the idea that lay behind President Clinton's personal attendance upon the execution of Ricky Ray Rector in February 1992, and which prepared so directly his victory in the New Hampshire primaries. It is the notion of blood sacrifice. The politician must prove his readiness to kill. It is revolting in every possible way. It is the law of the tyrant; it is the practice of the bully.

Do you think that there is any truth to what I have tried to argue? I argue that the anarchy of fear and terror, if anything, is encouraged by the death penalty.

Although I have asked you to reconsider your decision, I must also say, if only in gratitude for your help to me so far, and in simple fellow feeling, that I certainly respect your decisions.
Peter Linebaugh

Peter Linebaugh wrote to me about your case. While I can understand the pressures on you to take such a decision, I cannot say how strongly I hope that you will change your mind.

Peter is absolutely right to say that your decision will influence much more than the feelings of the relatives of those who you killed. It will influence the whole debate about capital punishment and therefore the chances of others avoiding execution, some of whom will have committed no crime.

You say in your letter to your friends and correspondents that you would 'like to expose these people for who they are in the hopes that it will help prevent them from hiding the truth and manipulating the outcome of someone else's trial'.

I think you are mistaken in this argument. In this country the Birmingham Six, the Guildford Four and the Maguire family have shown that years of campaigning can force the judges and the political establishment to back down. A host of other cases--the Cardiff Three, the trials of those arrested in the anti poll tax riot, the case of the Taylor sisters wrongly accused of murder, those accused of killing a policeman during the Broadwater Farm riots--have all had success.

In your country many of these people would have been dead many years ago, executed by the state. Any act which helps those who want to keep or extend the death penalty endangers the lives of people like these and many others.

That is why you must not give up the fight, even though you are guilty. You cannot bring the women you killed back to life, but you can play a part in saving the lives of those who the state will execute if the pro death penalty lobby gains in strength. Many of those the state will execute will be as innocent as the Birmingham Six or the Taylor sisters in this country. Please stay alive to play your part in saving their lives.
John Rees

Peter Linebaugh is author of The London Hanged and will speak on capital punishment at Marxism 94. John Rees is editor of International Socialism