Twenty-three innocent lives have been lost because of inaccurate evidence and false witnesses, and twenty-seven were saved at the last moment (Kamis). This shows that human judgment is not and never will be accurate enough to arbitrate whether one will live or die. This is especially true because most people are biased, and therefore, prejudice and racism greatly influence their decisions.
Barry Nakell, the author of the book, The Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty, notes that capital punishment is arbitrarily administered. Based upon the same evidence, a black defendant and a white defendant would receive different sentences. The ratio of first-degree murder charges filed against black defendants as opposed to those filed against white defendants was as high as 10:1 (131-9). In the worst cases, the black defendant could be fifty-six times as likely to face a first-degree murder charge than a white defendant (144-9). In addition, if the victim was white instead of black, the black defendant had six times a greater chance to receive a death sentence (144-9). According to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, in Texas in 1991, blacks made up 12 percent of the population, but 48 percent of the prison population and 55.5 percent of those on death row were black ("aclu.org"). This arbitrariness is a serious problem; even the former president Clinton has addressed it. At a White House conference, he expressed his concern about the death penalty. "I am concerned also at the federal level the issues at the federal level related more to the disturbing racial composition of those who've been convicted." .
The death penalty also singles out the poor. These people cannot pay high prices for lawyers to help them, and therefore, prosecutors use them to their advantage since it is easier to convict them. In a New York Times story, Lewin notes that if the defendant is poor and cannot afford proper legal counsel, prosecutors think it is to their advantage to seek capital punishment (1-5).
