Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Obama Decries Racial Bias in the application of the Death Penalty

President Barack Obama Friday tried to raise his supporters’ long-standing opposition to jury-directed death penalties by suggesting to a French reporter that Americans jurors and judges may be biased against African-Americans. 
“What happened in Oklahoma was deeply troubling,” said Obama, referring to a recent execution of an African-American man in Oklahoma.
Listen to Obama's remarks above
[...] 
Instead of sidestepping a foreign reporter’s question about a state-level issue in Oklahoma, Obama chose to expand the Oklahoma case into a veiled attack on the death penalty. 
“We have seen significant problems — racial bias, uneven application of the death penalty, situations in which there were individuals on death row who were later on were discovered to have been innocent … and all these I think do raise significant questions about how the death penalty has been applied,” he claimed in the Rose Garden press conference.
“I’ll be discussing with [Attorney General] Eric Holder and others to get me an analysis of what steps have been taken,” he said. 
“We do have to, as a society, ask ourselves some difficult and profound questions about these issues,” he claimed, even though the death penalty is supported by roughly 55 percent of the public, and is opposed by 37 percent.
Read the full story HERE.

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