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 occurred
without any type of due process. As the judicial
system has matured, minorities have found better representation but
it is not completely unbiased. In the past twenty years strict
controls have been implemented but the system still has symptoms of
racial bias. This racial bias was first recognized by the Supreme
Court in Fruman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972). The Supreme
Court Justices decide that the death penalty was being handed out
unfairly and according to Gest (1996) the Supreme Court felt the
death penalty was being imposed "freakishly' and ‘wantonly" and
"most often on blacks." Several years later in Gregg v. Georgia,
428 U.S. 153 (1976), the Supreme Court decided, with......
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