Men are more likely to be convicted of murder in the United States, as in 2022, 15,094 murder offenders were men and 2,107 were women. There are 2,281 (97.85 percent) men and 50 (2.15 percent) women currently on death row. Along with this, nearly all of the prisoners currently on death row are white or black. There are 978 White prisoners (41.96 percent) and 961 Black prisoners (41.23 percent). To fully grasp the whole picture we have to look into the cases. When we go into the aspect of the cases there is an evident racial bias. Racial bias against defendants of color and in favor of white victims has a strong effect on who is punished and how they are sentenced. This means that cases are likely to be taken more seriously and have more effort put into them if the victim in the case is white. It has been proven that when executions have been carried out for murder, 75 percent of the cases involve the murder of white victims, even though about half of all homicide victims in America are black.

The main issue at hand is the lack of representation for those who can not afford proper legal representation. When it comes to death row, the quality of representation a defendant receives in a capital case can make the difference between whether they live or die. Almost all of today’s death row defendants can not afford to pay for a lawyer, and depending on the state the standard varies for death penalty representation. There have been accounts of lawyers sleeping or drinking alcohol during the trial, lawyers with a racial bias towards their clients, lawyers who conduct no investigation or fail to obtain necessary experts, or lawyers who simply have no experience with capital cases. One of the main hallmarks of the American justice system is that everyone has the right to an attorney. However, when it comes to the death penalty there is not much of a budget for lawyers who are properly trained to represent such cases. With such a flaw in the justice system, it creates a flaw in the death penalty itself.