The death penalty or capital punishment others might say has been around as early as the Eighteenth Century BC. Put in effect by King Hammurabi of Babylon, there was twenty five …show more content…
Does your race determine rather or not you get put on death row? “Of the 3,859 persons executed for all crimes since 1930, 54.6 percent have been black or members of other racial minority groups. Of the 455 executed for rape alone, 89.5 percent have been nonwhite.23.” (Riedel & Wolfgang) Facts show that nonwhite citizens are not only more likely to be convicted of a crime but is also more likely to get executed. This is when an important question arise. Is the death penalty fair?” If there isn’t any fairness in deciding who gets the death penalty than why would we continue to let it be legal? “The rate at which eligible black defendants were sentenced to death was nearly 40% higher than the rate for other eligible defendants.” ( Dieter) People have been stating that the death penalty is racially driven for years now. “In 1972 Justices Douglas and Marshall explicitly suggested that the death penalty was being discriminatorily imposed against racial minority defendants.”