US: A survey of the death penalty in the state of Maryland has provided new evidence of racial discrimination in the US justice system, and will likely increase pressure for nation-wide reform of the system of capital punishment.
Offenders in Maryland who kill white victims are much more likely to be sentenced to death, especially if they are black, than those who kill black victims, according to the study commissioned for the Governor of Maryland.
Carried out by researchers at the University of Maryland, the survey concluded that state prosecutors are far more likely to seek the death penalty for black suspects charged with killing white victims than in other cases.
Democratic Governor Parris Glendenning halted all executions last May on growing evidence of such racial bias, but Republican Governor-elect Robert Ehrlich, who takes office this month, says he will lift the moratorium regardless of the findings and review cases on an individual basis.
Prof Raymond Paternoster, who led the survey, said that it would be premature to end the moratorium without first addressing the issues raised. "The kind of disparities we're finding are systemic," he said. "They cannot be identified on a case-by-case analysis." Twelve men, eight of them black, are on Maryland's death row, all convicted of murdering white victims, a specific factor that strongly influenced the prosecutors' calls for the death penalty, the report suggests. Four who have exhausted all appeals could be executed immediately if the moratorium is ended.
Maryland is one of a number of states, including Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey, Nevada and North Carolina, that have recently imposed a ban on carrying out the death penalty, which was reintroduced in the United States by the Supreme Court in 1976.
Despite this, the number of executions across the US was up last year, from 66 to 71, largely due to an upsurge in Texas, where 33 convicts were put to death, nearly twice as many as in 2001.
"Fewer states carried out the death penalty in 2002," said Mr Richard Dieter, of the Death Penalty Information Centre in Washington. "With Texas accounting for almost half and the South for almost all, the death penalty was not as widely used."
In Illinois, a scandal over wrongful convictions - 13 wrongful death-penalty verdicts since 1987 were unearthed on the basis of new DNA evidence - led Democratic Governor George Ryan to impose a moratorium three years ago. Democratic Governor-elect Rod Blagojevich, who takes over next week, has said he will continue the moratorium.
Five innocent men who were on death row in Illinois appealed yesterday to Governor Ryan to commute all death sentences in Illinois before he steps down, especially the "Death Row 10", who confessed to crimes after they were allegedly tortured by police.
Yesterday, amid an outcry from civil rights and church groups, Governor Ronnie Musgrove of Mississippi ordered a last-minute stay of execution for Ronald Foster, a man with an IQ of 32, who was convicted of murdering a shop assistant at the age of 17.
The US Supreme Court, which last year overturned the death penalty for mentally retarded inmates, is considering whether to end the execution of juvenile offenders, a practice that the US shares only with Iran.