Interesting stats on the Death Penalty

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/FactSheet.pdf
Some highlights:
• In 96% of the states where there have been reviews of race and the death penalty, there was a pattern of either race-of-victim or race-of-defendant discrimination, or both. (Prof. David Baldus report to the ABA, 1998)
• 98% of the chief district attorneys in death penalty states are white; only 1% are black. (Prof. Jeffrey Pokorak, Cornell Law Review,1998)
• A sophisticated statistical study in Philadelphia found that for similar crimes committed by similar defendants, blacks received the death penalty at a 38% higher rate than all others. (The Death Penalty in Black & White - DPIC, 1998)
•Consistent with previous years, the 2003 FBI Uniform Crime Report showed that the South had the highest murder rate. The South accounts for over 80% of executions. The Northeast, which has less than 1% of all executions, again had the lowest murder rate.
• A 1995 Hart Research Poll of police chiefs in the U.S. found that the majority of the chiefs do not believe that the death penalty is an effective law enforcement tool.