Proponents of capital punishment believe that the argument that the death penalty is discriminatory and arbitrary does not give support to the abolition of capital punishment, but rather to the extension of it. Edward Koch, the former mayor of New York from 1978 to 1989 and death penalty supporter, states that the discriminatory manner of the death penalty "no longer seems to be the problem it once was," yet in 1987, the Supreme Court case of McCleskey v. Kemp established that in Georgia someone who kills a white person is four times more likely to be sentenced to death than someone who kills a black person (Death Penalty Focus). In response to this, supporters of the death penalty believe that the death penalty should be extended to all murders. This is what was attempted after the Furman decision. A number of states sought to resolve the discriminatory and arbitrary nature of the death penalty by simply sentencing to death everyone convicted of first-degree murder, but the Supreme Court rejected this proposal saying that "mandatory death sentence laws did not really resolve the problem but instead 'simply papered [it] over' since juries responded by refusing to convict certain arbitrarily chosen defendants of first-degree murder" (Berger 353). An argument against the death penalty which to sensible and decent persons should seem undeniable is the fact that innocent people have been murdered by the state in the past and in all probability more will follow. The wrongful execution of an innocent person is such an awful injustice that in any civilized society could never be justified, yet this is the message that the United States is willing to pronounce. Simply put by Professor Nathanson, "to maintain the death penalty is to be willing to risk innocent lives." In 1987, a study conducted by Hugo Bedau and Michael Radelet appeared in the Standford Law Review concerning the execution of innocent people.

The study concluded that in the period between 1900 to 1980, about "350 people were wrongfully convicted of capital offenses, 139 of the 350 were sentenced to death, and 23 were actually executed" (Nathanson 344). Over this eighty year period this figure averages out to the death of an innocent person about every 3.4 years. This fact is extremely disturbing and rightfully so, yet death penalty advocates blatantly disregard the information or attempt to justify it in some way. Those who support capital punishment claim that such cases of innocent people being executed have never occurred. For instance, Edward Koch quotes Hugo Bedau in support of his claim that such cases are not true, saying "it is false sentimentality to argue that the death penalty should be abolished because of the abstract possibility that an innocent person might be executed." Koch, in an attempt to gain political support, acted quite unethically by quoting Bedau out of context and implying that such cases!

have not occurred. According to David Bruck, a prominent lawyer for South Carolina Office of Appellate Defense, "all Bedau was saying was that doubts concerning execu

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