> The solution, short of abolishing the death penalty, is to
> prohibit the death penalty in jurisdictions where the racist
> discrepancy continues. It's not that dissimilar from banning
> cops from racially profiling drivers, Normally cops don't
> need a reason to pull you over, but where statistics show
> that there is racial profiling going on, they do -- we had a
> case like that in a northern suburb a few years ago. Really,
> this is not hard. If the death penalty is being administered
> in a demonstrably racist way in general, and it
> incontrovertably is, then it cannot be administered at all
> unless the racist administration is ended.
I have no quarrel with that. My point was that you can establish whether DP is administered in a racist way by case studies - all you really need to is to show a few convincing cases to establish a pattern - even though this would fall short of statistical standards, which require large number of observations to be statistically significant. Racial profiling is different because, unlike DP, there is a large number of observations to draw from and make statistically significant conclusions.
Quite frankly I think you missed the point of this discussion which pertains to methodological issues of the use and misuse of statistics rather than merits or demerits of our justice system. It started when one Dennis Claxton (I am not even sure if that is a real person or an alias of some prankster, it's hard to tell on this list anymore, but I always try to err on the side of assuming the former) quoted a statistical study showing discrepancies in sentencing based on the race of the murder victims. Any competent statistician will tell you that inferences based on sample N=27 split four ways are not very robust - to say the least. I communicated that message and stated that a better way of proving bias is examining individual cases - which is basically the case study approach. I also added a tangential comment re. courts rulings on admissibily of statistical evidence which is a different thing but related to the same methodological principle.
In response Claxton posted a link to a statistical study supportive of his ideas, whose methodology did not impress me very much - so I said so and explained why. Again, why I tried to argue was taking some rational approach to the problem - using methodologies that allow identifying specific causes, which suggests specific remedies - instead of making blanket incendiary statements which basically shut down any rational debate on the issue.
In my view, if the opponents of death penalty are "playing the race card" to accomplish their political objectives - this is a form of racist rabble rousing not much different from KKK or neo-nazi mobilization, even though I may be sympathetic to the cause itself. If, otoh, the real issue is differential treatment of minorities in our justice system - which I assumed was the case in your response - then of course we should concentrate on that disparity itself, whereas death penalty is quite tangential to it, because more disparities exist in sentencing cases that do not involve DP (e.g. drug offences). Again, I tried to be rational instead of incensed.
I hope this clarifies the issue. As far as my position on DP is concerned, I stated it time again on this forum, so there is no need to reiterate it here, especially that it is not on the top of my political priorities list.
Wojtek