In 2013, Death Penalty Rarely Doled Out To Those Whose Crimes Include Minority Victims

Of the 39 executions performed in 2013, the overwhelming majority involved a crime with a white victim. The statistics from the Death Penalty Information Center show the continued racial bias of death penalty imposition, even as it becomes a decreasingly common punishment. While 32 of the 39 executions involved a white victim, just one white person was executed for killing only a black man. This defendant, Robert Gleason, was one of just four people who “volunteered” to be executed by waiving his appeals. Here’s how it breaks down:

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2 Percent Of Counties Perform Majority of U.S. Executions

Just two percent of U.S. counties have been responsible for a majority of executions since the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a death penalty moratorium in 1976. And about two percent of U.S. counties house the majority of current death row inmates, according to a new report by the Death Penalty Information Center.

The findings add to the body of evidence that suggest the death penalty is applied arbitrarily, with factors such as location and race having more bearing on a death sentence than the severity of the crime.

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New Picture Has Emerged of Woman Facing Imminent Execution in Virginia

"Mastermind" of Crime Was in Reality Led Along by Actual Killers Who Received Lesser Sentences

WASHINGTON - September 7 - Unless the governor or the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, Teresa Lewis will be put to death on September 23 in Virginia, the first woman to be executed in that state in a century. But the woman whom the sentencing judge assumed was the mastermind in the murders of her husband and adult stepson now has been shown to be a simpler person who was readily led by others and the target of a scam by an ambitious hitman. Ms. Lewis has taken full responsibility for her role in the crime, but was probably less culpable than the two men who used her and actually carried out the killings. Those men were given life sentences, while Lewis pleaded guilty and received a death sentence.

"The issue in this case," said Richard Dieter, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center, "is not that Teresa Lewis is a woman and should be treated differently. But it would be grossly unfair if the one person among those involved who is probably the least danger to society, who is certainly no more guilty than those who carried out the murders, and whose disabilities call out for mercy, is the only person scheduled to die for this crime."

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