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A 2003 study of death sentences in Pennsylvania found that African-American defendants were far more likely to receive the death penalty than were people of other ethnic origins who committed similar crimes. And an article this week by IPS News confirms that this isn't just a Pennsylvania thing. The article quotes a study which found that juries in the U.S. "tend to hand down the death penalty twice as often to black defendants with stereotypically black features like darker skin, bigger noses and fuller lips, than to those perceived to have less stereotypically black features." [Read story.] Wow. So it's all about what they look like, not what they actually do. The blacker you are, the more you deserve to die. The whiter you are, the more you deserve to live. And this is called our "justice" system? Where is the justice? And who are the real criminals here? -----
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By Mary Shaw (about the author)
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Mary Shaw is a Philadelphia-based writer and activist, with a focus on politics, human rights, and social justice. She is a former Philadelphia Area Coordinator for the Nobel-Prize-winning human rights group Amnesty International, and her views (more...)
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Bush Delayed
by skyreader7 on Friday, Jul 21, 2006 at 9:05:40 AM
But the NAACP didn't give him a free ride
by Mary Shaw on Sunday, Jul 23, 2006 at 7:42:01 AM