So, John Ashcroft doesn't think there's anything wrong with the way the federal death penalty is
administered. Janet Reno commissioned a report on the death penalty as applied to minorities, and it was
finished by Ashcroft in time to try to spin public opinion for Juan Raul Garza's execution.

In his report he concluded that there is no racial bias in federal death sentences and that whites are more
likely to receive death sentences. This is in spite of the fact that while McVeigh was alive, there were 19
other inmates on Federal Death Row. Counting McVeigh, only 3 were white. As of June 11, that number
is now 2. In the Justice Department's study, almost 1,000 capital cases were cited, and in those, federal
prosecutors sought the death penalty far more often for minorities. This is the way it is all over the
country, in many state's prisons also.

Ashcroft said that the reasoning was that the cases involving minorities were more atrocious than whites.
He also said that the discrepancy in the numbers happens because prosecutors seek the death penalty
more often in districts where there are more minority defendants than whites.

There are so many holes in this logic and so many directions to shoot it down, I'm not sure where to begin.

First, the report doesn't explain how prosecutors seeking the death penalty more often for minorities
doesn't result in whites receiving it more often. In fact, part of the report shows whites more often being
offered plea bargains than minorities, and the acceptance of plea bargains doesn't appear to be tied to the
severity of the crime. Many of the capital cases involved drug-related murders by minorities who were
lower level drug dealers. The killings were ordered by their bosses, who were able to plead their cases
down to lesser sentences. Juan Garza's attorney has noted that there have been several cases where
whites had committed 3 or more drug related murders and federal prosecutors did not seek the death
penalty. All that I can figure Ashcroft is saying is that a bullet in the head somehow is more preferable
from a white offender than a minority.

Second, I assume that he had a straight face when he claimed that even though prosecutors seek the
death penalty more often for minorities, there is no racial bias. And he says that in spite of this, whites
are more likely to receive the death penalty. I would laugh if this logic wasn't affecting real people's lives.

None of this may mean much to most people, but this scares the hell out of me for several reasons. It's
part of a large picture that I'll try to paint here.

Minorities committing crimes remains a hot topic with the media and politicians. Remember the extensive
coverage of minority youths in Central Park last year running wild while the police stood idly by? Or the
footage of minority rioters and looters in Cincinnati a couple of months ago? How about the coverage of
drive by shooting victims in the inner city on local newscasts? And without minorities, the TV show Cops
would have been off the air in about 3 weeks.

There are many places on the internet where statistics can be found showing that minorities make up
disproportionate amounts of the prison population in the United States. Sociological studies show that
minorities don't commit a disproportionate amount of the crime, but no one would know by looking at how
over-represented we are in the court and penal systems.

The outcome of the last presidential election revealed that somewhere around 1/4 to 1/3 of states have
laws prohibiting convicted felons from voting. If I have to tell you who the majority of people not allowed
to vote because of this is, you haven't been paying attention. People in charge of elections who realized
this were able to prevent an awful lot of votes for Al Gore in the last presidential election.

We've been on a kick to build more and more prisons in the last couple of decades, while there has been
a push to make more and more crimes punishable by death. Once again, who do you think are the people
these movements are designed to affect? This also ties in with the recent Extreme Court decision that
authorities can detain or arrest anyone for pretty much anything they want. Now, when racial profiling is
factored in, and we realize that people can be pulled over for arousing suspicion just for having a really
good tan... I'm not going to suggest that being allowed to arrest people on no grounds is going to give
police more opportunity to fabricate or plant evidence in people's vehicles, but....

How does globalization tie in here? Well, consider that as more jobs have become extinct by being sent to
other countries, it means that there are people who don't fit into the plans for where this country is going.
Many people have been displaced. Even as this country went through unprecedented prosperity, wages
lost ground, people were kicked off welfare, and many of the jobs for them were very low-level. If we go
into recession, we already have warehouses for those unpleasant people who will be left with nowhere to
go and nothing to do: the prisons.

Our prison population is one of the largest in the world, and growing. We stubbornly hold onto imprisoning
and killing our own citizens, and we are being singled out by a large part of the rest of the world as
barbarians for it, among other reasons. We have an occupant of the White House who has presided over
more executions than any other world leader, and no sign that things are going to change any time soon.
Molly Ivins was quoted recently saying that one of the reasons Europe abhors our use of the death
penalty is that we use the death penalty primarily to punish people for the crime of being poor minorities.

Which brings me back to Ashcroft and his report. In spite of his supposed religious beliefs he is a
hard-core death penalty advocate. He fits right in with how this administration thinks we should be doing
things. I am disgusted but not surprised that he would make such ridiculous conclusions about the state of
the death penalty in regard to race.

And that is the last brush stroke in the picture. By claiming that we have not gone overboard, that is, not
reached a limit of acceptability for imprisoning and executing minorities, he is implying that we still have
room to go further in that direction. He has not cited any reason to stop, slow down, or change anything,
and so we can keep right on the way we are. We can convict and execute even more poor minorities.

Someone who didn't know better would swear this country just doesn't like minorities much at all.