Wait no longer

Death row moratorium needs to happen now

To get yourself killed in the United States, all you have to do is hang around in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The problem is, for many minorities and underprivileged citizens, that place is often a courtroom.

Last week, the 370,000-member American Bar Association responded to the questionable fairness of capital punishment by urging that a nationwide moratorium be placed on the execution of the death penalty.

Although facing opposition within its own ranks, the lawyers' association voted 280-119 to begin lobbying efforts that could force a halt to executions -- this in response to obvious patterns showing that administration of capital punishment is often racist and classist.

For example, last year in Pennsylvania 108 of the 182 prisoners awaiting execution were black, representing 59 percent of the total number sentenced to die; in contrast, just 10 percent of the state's total population is black. Nationally, roughly 50 percent of the total number of prisoners sentenced to die are nonwhite. Additionally, blacks make up more than 40 percent of death row inmates, but just 12 to 13 percent of the U.S. population.

The ABA resolution introduced a number of questions regarding the legal and moral aspects of administering the death penalty -- but one of the questions it did not raise is whether the death penalty is wrong.

The association never brought up the constitutionality of capital punishment, confining itself instead to the question of whether the implementation of the death penalty is unfair. And when it was put to a vote, most of the members in the ABA's House of Delegates decided that the way death sentences are currently administered is suspect because it seems to implicate poor people and minorities more than any other groups.

As to whether the ABA resolution will have any effect on the way sentences are issued in America remains to be seen.

Previously, the association adopted policies that called for: improvements in counsel offered to capital defendants; availability of federal court reviews of state prosecutions; efforts to eliminate racial discrimination in capital sentencing; and a halt on executions of mentally retarded defendants, or those who are under the age of 18.

Not surprisingly, the ABA claims most of those policies have generally not been implemented.

Policies without action are meaningless. Waiting to enact the moratorium won't help, and for those unfairly placed on death row, waiting could be deadly.