Jesse Jackson

Jesse Jackson is a minister and civil rights activist who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in both 1984 and 1988. The following viewpoint is excerpted from his 1996 book Legal Lynching: Racism, Injustice and the Death Penalty. Jackson argues that because there are no firm objective rules to govern prosecutors, jurors, and judges in seeking and implementing the death penalty, it will inevitably be administered in ways that discriminate against members of America’s minority groups, especially African Americans. He cites statistical studies that indicate that black defendants are more likely than white defendants convicted of the same crime to receive the death penalty. Other studies, he argues, demonstrate how the race of murder victims affects death penalty sentencing, with murderers of whites being more likely to be executed than murderers of...