The death penalty is considered one of the most controversial punishments in our justice system. From a personal standpoint, many people opine that it is an inhumane punishment and that the principle of commensurate punishment does not mean that a death sentence should be imposed on the offender. Other people however, insist that the death penalty is the best punishment which can be imposed on heinous crimes in order to inflict the right punishment for the offender and in order to deter the rest of society from committing similar acts. This paper shall discuss the position stating that the death penalty should be abolished in all fifty states. It shall discuss the different legal and academic papers which support this position and shall focus on the following issues surrounding the imposition of capital punishment: whether or not its administration is affected by race and whether or not it actually deters the commission of crimes. These concerns are crucial in determining the appropriate application of capital punishment and would help this student arrive at a logical conclusion to this paper.   In Supreme Court of Louisiana No. 98-KA-1078 v. Allen Snyder (1998), Louisiana Supreme Court Justice J. Johnson entered his dissenting opinion to the court’s decision by firmly stating that he would “have more confidence in the fair-mindedness of this jury and the jury’s pronouncement of the death sentence, had the state not used its peremptory challenges to exclude every African American juror, resulting in an all white jury for this black defendant”. His statement provides one of the crucial reasons why the death penalty should be abolished in all fifty US states. There have been various instances of cases involving discriminatory juries. Such instances include the “Texas shuffle”, where African American jurors were not allowed to be part of the jury in death penalty cases (Miller-El v. Cockrell, 2003). District attorneys have a belief that black jurors often have doubts about a defendant’s liability for killing and that they also believe that such defendants are remorseful of their crimes regardless of their seemingly uncaring behavior. On the other hand, white jurors see these defendants as dangerous. And black jurors feel that the white jurors do not actually comprehend the environment where the black defendant comes from (Amnesty International, 2009). In a paper by Loury (2001) he assessed the trend in the felony division jury trials in Cook County Circuit Court between January 1 and June 30, 2000 and he found out that in juries with about three people from white neighborhoods, a guilty verdict for black defendants was reached in 76% of the cases; this is in contrast to 67% in cases where the juries included 3 or more people from mostly black neighborhoods (Loury, 2001). Conviction rates for black defendants were higher when the number of jurors from mostly white areas also rose; it decreased when the number of jurors from mostly black neighborhoods also increased. Loury (2001) also found out that the incidence of conviction in black defendants decreased when the number of jurors from areas with below-average incomes increased. All in all, Loury’s (2001) assessment implicated that jurors with different backgrounds were more inclined to disbelieve the credibility of the poor and the minority witnesses and defendants. Based on data gathered from the American Civil Liberties Union, in 38 states which allow capital punishment, 98% of the prosecutors are white and they also completely control which cases will be tried as capital cases (2003). In one of the judicial districts of Georgia, the district attorney was able to try about 30 capital cases from 1974 to 1994 with 24 of these cases being against black defendants; in instances where the defendant was black and the victim was white, the prosecutor used 96 of his 103 jury challenges against the black defendants (American Civil Liberties Union, 2003). Other instances of jury rigging have been seen in the US justice system. We note the case of Harold Williams – a man who spent more than sixteen years in prison on death row after a Pennsylvania jury gave him three death sentences (Goodman, 2005). During Williams’ trial in 1989, his prosecutor was Jack McMahon. McMahon was known for his discriminatory practices during jury selection. In fact, he is known for being in a training video which demonstrates to new prosecutors how to utilize race in selecting juries for death penalty trials (Death Penalty Information Office, 2010). In 2003, armed with new DNA evidence, Williams was granted a new trial where he was later acquitted of all charges. His case is just one among many questionable convictions with death penalty sentences; and race seems to play a crucial role in the correct adjudication of these cases.