SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - More condemned men and women are on California's death row for killing whites than for murdering people of any other race, despite there being more black and Hispanic murder victims, according to a new study.
The study, to be published in the Santa Clara Law Review, tallied the races of California homicide victims in the 1990s.
It concluded suspects who murdered whites were almost four times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who killed Hispanics, and three times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who killed blacks.
"To put it bluntly, there's apparently different values being placed on victims from different racial and ethnic groups," said Northeastern University criminal justice professor Glenn Pierce, a co-author of the study. "That's what the pattern would suggest."
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