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Execution Gurney in Florida
Execution Scheduled for February 4. 2004
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA "We simply cannot say we live in a country that offers equal justice to all Americans when racial disparities plague the system by which our society imposes the ultimate punishment." US Senator, January 2003(1) Introduction The USA will soon carry out its 300th execution of an African American prisoner since resuming judicial killing in 1977. By 10 April 2003, 290 blacks had been put to death, and at least a further 10 were scheduled to be killed by the end of July. African Americans are disproportionately represented among people condemned to death in the USA. While they make up 12 per cent of the national population, they account for more than 40 per cent of the country's current death row inmates, and one in three of those executed since 1977. While the United States resorts to the death penalty more than most countries – it has carried out well over 700 executions since 1990 – it is also the case that only a small percentage of murders result in execution in the United States. It is relevant, therefore, to ask if the capital justice system selects these defendants for death in a manner that is free from racial bias. On 18 March 2003, two African American men were executed. The two people for whose murder Louis Jones and Walanzo Robinson were killed – Tracie McBride, white, and Dennis Hill, black – were among some half a million people murdered in the USA since 1977. Blacks and whites were the victims of these murders in almost equal numbers.(2) Yet 80 per cent of the people executed since 1977 were convicted of murders involving white victims.
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