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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 ....

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... Several years later in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), the Supreme Court decided, with efficient controls, the death penalty could be used constitutionally. 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 (199 ...