Rights Group Charges Bias in U.S. Executions

Amnesty International, documenting human rights abuses by 135 governments, expressed concern Tuesday over what it said is evidence of racial discrimination in U.S. death sentences.

In its annual global survey, the London-based human rights organization accused scores of other governments of kidnaping and killing opponents and said that men, women and children were tortured in one-third of the nations it reviewed.

In addition to the United States, Amnesty International cited the scale of death sentences passed in South Africa, Iran and China.

It said 164 people--all but nine of them black--were hanged in Pretoria’s central prison alone in 1987. In China, 132 people were reported executed in 1987, and in Iran, 158.

‘Matter of Urgent Concern’

Referring to the United States, Amnesty International said that “evidence of racial discrimination in the application of the death penalty was a matter of urgent concern.”

Twenty-five people were executed in eight states last year. There were 1,982 prisoners on Death Row in 34 states.

Amnesty International said it wrote to the governors of Georgia and nine other states to protest “marked racial disparities in death sentencing” after a Supreme Court ruling on the issue in April, 1987.

The high court voted 5 to 4 to deny an appeal on behalf of a black prisoner, Warren McCleskey. The appeal cited a study showing black defendants convicted of killing white victims in Georgia were several times more likely to receive death sentences than those convicted of killing blacks.

The Amnesty International report also found that torture is used extensively in Latin America and that “the use of clandestine forces linked to security forces to terrorize political opposition appeared to have increased in the region.”

El Salvador, Colombia, Panama, Paraguay, Brazil, Honduras and Peru were named as countries where “death squads” appeared to operate with official impunity.