Facts about the Death Penalty Literature review

Facts about the Death Penalty - Literature review Example There are those who believe that the process is biased and must be curtailed until these issues can be examined, however, I would argue that despite any bias in the application of the death penalty, most of the criminals currently sitting on death row are guilty of the crimes they committed and should see their sentence through to its fruition. Those seeking to abolish the death penalty in this country point believe that the problem of racial bias exists within its administration. The most famous statistical study conducted regarding racial bias in death penalty assessment was the 1970s Baldus study. A professor at the University of Iowa Law School, David Baldus "tried to assess the influence of race and other illegitimate factors on the selection of murder suspects for death sentences" (Howe 2085). The results of the study indicated that if a murder victim was white, the rate to which the offender was sentenced to death was much higher than if the victim was black (2085). In a more recent study, commissioned in 2000 by the former governor of Maryland, capital sentencing in that state between 1978 and 1999 was examined. The study found "pronounced bias against killers of white victims, and within the white-victim cases, additional bias against black offenders" (2090).