Give Them Death: Three Leading Democratic Candidates Support Capital Punishment
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet.
When Clinton, Obama and Edwards took the stage before a mostly African-American crowd in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Monday night, they came brimming with concern for the plight of black America. From the disproportionate effects of the subprime loan crisis to the racially drawn pitfalls of U.S. healthcare, the black community, said Edwards, "is hurt worse by poverty than any community in America. And it's our responsibility, not just for the African-American community, but for America, as a nation, to take on this moral challenge."

Politicians like to see moral challenges when it's convenient. The candidates have labeled the war in Iraq, global warming and the economy "moral challenges" before various audiences in the past few months. But there's one topic the leading Dems systematically exclude from their morality crusade, one that begged to be addressed before an African-American audience in a Southern state: the death penalty.

It's not news that African-Americans are disproportionately represented on death row. While 12 percent of the country is African-American, more than 40 percent of the country's death row population is black -- and although blacks and whites are murder victims in nearly equal numbers, 80 percent of the prisoners executed since the death penalty was reinstated were convicted for murders in which the victim was white. Study upon study in states across the country have discovered racial bias at every stage of the death penalty process, including one that found that the more "stereotypically black" a defendant is perceived to be, the more likely that person is to be sentenced to death. Add to that the fact that over 20 percent of black defendants who have been executed were convicted by all-white juries, and the racial reality of the death penalty becomes impossible to ignore.

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