Unfortunately, not only does the death penalty punish the innocent but it as well punishes those with a different race, poverty, and geography level. It has been proved that those who kill a white person are more likely to receive the death penalty than those who kill a black person. For instance, in Florida, in comparable cases, a defendant s odds of receiving a death sentence are 4.8 times higher if the victim was white than if the victim was black. Another example is the fact that in Kentucky 1,000 African Americans have been murdered there since the reinstitution of the death penalty in that state. So far, all of the state s 39 death row inmates were sentenced for murdering white victims.
Poverty is also a big factor on who gets executed.
The American Bar Association and many scholars believe that what determines if you executed is, not only the facts of the crime, but the quality of legal representation. Defending a capital case is time-consuming and not to mention very expensive. For this reason poor people cannot pay experienced defense lawyers because the price is too demanding. Therefore, they do not receive the adequate help and end up loosing their lives. Another factor that determines if a convict receives capital punishment is where someone commits a crime.