Contrary to many beliefs, the imposition of the death penalty is extraordinarily rare. Since 1967, there has been one execution for every 1600 murders or .06%. According to the FBI's Uniform Crime Report and Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1967 and 1996, there have been approximately 560,000 murders and only 358 executions.

Opponents of capital punishment say there is a risk in executing the innocent-advocates disagree. Great effort has been made in pre-trial, trial, appeal, and clemency procedures to minimize the chance of an innocent being convicted, sentenced to death, or executed. Since 1973, these legal protections have been so extraordinary that 37% of all death row cases have been overturned for due process reasons. Inmates are 6 times more likely to get off death row by appeals than by execution. In July of 1997, opponents claimed that 69 "innocent" death row inmates have been released since 1973. In just a casual review of 39 of those cases, there was no evidence of innocence i

Opponents of capital punishment believe there is discrimination. They assert that the poor and racial minorities are given death sentences more frequently than whites. Advocates of the death penalty state that anyone who commits a capital crime should be given the death penalty, regardless of race, gender, and wealth. Advocates address the discrimination issue with the following facts: (1) only 38% of those on Georgia's death row are poor, (2) there is no evidence which proves that wealthy capital murderers may be less likely to be executed, (3) the majority of those executed are white. As a matter of fact, between 1991 and 1994 56% of the people executed were white and 38% were black, (4) the majority of those on death row are white, and (5) Successful capital prosecutions have nothing to do with the race of the victim or of the defendant and everything to do with the nature of the crime. Opponents also believe that blacks are more likely to receive the death penalty when killing a white person rather than killing a black person, even though between 92 and 97% of murderers who receive the death penalty are involved in intra-racial offenses as opposed to inter-racial offenses. Daryl Charles of the National Review addresses this issue stating, "A twist on the racial disparity-argument says that, even if black murderers are no more likely to be executed than white murderers, black murderers are more likely to get the death penalty when they kill whites rather than wh

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 998
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)