Report: Racial bias continues to taint the capital punishment system in the United States
According to a recent report released by the ACLU, racial bias continues to taint the capital punishment system in the United States.
The discrepancies were prevalent in areas such as jury selection to through decisions about who faces execution.
The death penalty is disproportionately imposed on people of color.
Condemned prisoners often wait decades in solitary confinement before execution, in violation of internationally-recognized prohibitions against this mistreatment. This “death row phenomenon” may cause some prisoners, like Robert Gleason executed in Virginia in January 2013, to “volunteer” for execution rather than remain on death row.
The report calls for the U.S. to take measures to ensure that the death penalty is not tainted by racial bias, to strengthen safeguards to protect against wrongful convictions and executions and to “ensure that lethal drugs used for executions originate from legal, regulated sources, and are approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration.”
Click here for the full report.
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