In violation of international law, over 120 children have been sentenced to death in this country since 1977 and at least 29 people with severe mental disabilities have been executed. Similar reports have been issued in the past year by the American Bar Association and the National Law Journal. Nearly everyone executed in the United States since 1976 has been poor. Nearly all of these defendants, according to the studies, have had substandard legal representation. In a survey of six southern states, over half of death row inmates had been represented by lawyers who had never before handled a capital case.
Race is the other most significant factor in determining who is executed.
Prosecutors in Pennsylvania, Alabama and Georgia have been shown to deliberately exclude African Americans from juries on death penalty cases. Despite the hype following the well-publicized murder of Matthew Shepherd in Wyoming, few death sentences have ever been given for the murders of gay men by heterosexual men. On the other hand, many killers of gay men have gotten lighter sentences by saying they feared being propositioned. Allegations of lesbianism are routinely used by prosecutors seeking the death penalty for women. This ruling was recently reiterated to allow the State of California to kill Thomas Thompson in California, who had been granted a retrial by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Jay Siripongs, who may not have committed the murder for which he was executed at San Quentin in February.