THE TIME TO ABOLISH THE DEATH PENALTY IS NOW!

The start of 2007 could be the beginning of the end of the death penalty in the United States.

Executions are on hold in over a dozen states, and botched executions have put the lethal injection process under increasing scrutiny. In effect, as the United States rang in the New Year, half the country was not practicing capital punishment.

In 1976, the Supreme Court reinstated the use of the death penalty, declaring that the problems associated with it were solved. More than thirty years later, the shameful record is clear: the death penalty continues to be applied in an inhumane, unjust, anti-poor and racist manner.

Capital punishment's flaws are built into the system. And no tinkering with the machinery of death can fix them.

The death penalty is used disproportionately against people of color, especially African Americans, who are 13 percent of the U.S. population but account for more than 40 percent of prisoners on death rows across the country. Prosecutors are far more likely to seek the death penalty if the victim is white than Black--80 percent of victims in all death penalty cases are white, and only 14 percent are Black. When it comes to the death penalty, the lives of people of color are valued less than those of whites.

Capital punishment is reserved for the poor in the United States. Over 90 percent of those on death row could not afford legal representation. More plainly stated, those without the capital get the punishment.

The parade of innocent people released from death row--now more than 120 since reinstatement of the death penalty--is living proof that the death penalty is too flawed to fix. The recent debate over lethal injection shines a light on how the states and federal government put people to death, and whether their methods constitute cruel and unusual punishment. But mixing the chemicals differently is no solution.

Abolishing the death penalty is.