“Of course, the death penalty is racist. And it would be wrong even if it weren’t,” the Los Angeles Times stated in an editorial earlier this week. The piece is in response to two significant developments that occurred last month, highlighting the racism inherent in capital punishment. The first was a writ petition filed by the Office of the State Public Defender, legal organizations, and civil rights groups at the CA Supreme Court contending that the death penalty “is administered in a racially discriminatory manner and violates the equal protection provisions of the state Constitution.” The second was an order issued by a federal district court judge to the Alameda District Attorney to review as many as 35 death penalty cases in California’s Alameda County from the past 30 years to look for “any potential signs of prosecutorial misconduct in the form of the exclusion of jurors based solely on race.” However, the editors write, “Even if the state could perform painless and anxiety-free executions and racial biases were eliminated, the death penalty would still be wrong” because, among other factors, it gives the government too much power, is applied arbitrarily, and “is overtly political.”
