Beginning of Essay
Throughout history, minorities have been ill-represented in the criminal justice system, particularly in cases where the possible outcome is death. In early America, blacks were lynched for the slightest violation of informal laws and many of these killings occu ....

Middle of Essay
.... Yet, even with these various controls, the system does not effectively eliminate racial bias. According to Professor Steven Goldstein of Florida State University, "There are so many discretionary stages: whether the prosecutor decides to seek the death penalty, whether the jury recommends it, whether the judge gives it" (As cited in Smolowe, 1991, 68). It is in these discretionary stages that racial biases can infect the system of dealing out death sentences. Smolowe (1991) shows this infection by giving examples of two cases decided in February of 1991, both in Columbus. The first example is a white defendant named James Robert Caldwell who w ....