" (Mello, "Against the Death Penalty" 31) .
Another major augment against the death penalty is that it violates the constitutional guarantee of equal protection. This is the case in that it is randomly and discriminatorily applied. "It is imposed disproportionately upon those whose victims are white, offenders are people of color, and on those who are poor and uneducated." (Bedau) An article in the September 26, 2000 issue of The Progressive boldly supports this view, suggesting that the death penalty is indeed unethical in that it infringes on constitutional guarantee of equal protection. According to the article, data released by the U.S. Department of Justice suggests that capital punishment system is indeed racist. "Of the 682 defendants facing capital charges in federal cases since 1996, blacks, Latinos and other people of color made up 8 percent of the total. Over the past five years, 48 % of those people whose cases were submitted to the Justice Department for review were African American, 29 % Latino and 20 % white. Of the 19 people currently sentenced to death under federal law, 15 are people of color. Thirteen of those are black." (Love) Additionally, the article points out that "geography also plays a roles in who is chosen to be executed on the federal level" and "noted that blacks were much more likely to face the death penalty for killing whites than were white defendants who killed minorities." In response to these and other findings, figures of the left wing are speaking out. "The entire criminal-justice system is rife with racism, and this is nowhere more evident than in the administration of the death penalty," said Diann Rust-Tierney, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Capital Punishment Project. "What is this, some form of natural selection? Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.