by TChris

There's no doubt that affluent defendants who can afford to mount a strong death penalty defense will probably be spared a verdict of death, while those with fewer resources (particularly in states that don't fund an adequate defense for the indigent) are more likely to be executed. That's the message being spread by David Kaczynski, brother of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, and William Babbitt, brother of Manny Babbitt, "a grade-school dropout and paranoid schizophrenic, scarred by Vietnam, who was executed in California in 1999 after a defense lawyer mounted no defense at all."

Race is just as important as income in the inequitable implementation of the death penalty.

Study after study has shown that no matter what the offense, blacks and whites suspected of similar crimes are charged differently, convicted at different rates and sentenced differently.

In a 2000 report, for instance, Human Rights Watch analyzed U.S. Justice Department data and found that while blacks make up only 13 percent of the population, they are 30 percent of those arrested, 41 percent of those in local jails and 49 percent of those in prison. When the organization revisited the issue three years later, little had changed.