Today, Adam Liptak of the New York Times has written an article taking a renewed look at the role race plays in death penalty cases.  The article can be found here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/29/us/29bar.html?partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss

What is particularly great about this article is the context provided, part of which is set forth below.  Most people would think that a racial bias in the application of the death penalty would be of interest to the legal system, however…

This discussion, at least where the courts are concerned, is entirely academic. Twenty-one years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that even solid statistical evidence of racial disparities in the administration of the death penalty did not offend the Constitution. The vote was 5 to 4, and the case was McCleskey v. Kemp.

That ruling closed off what had seemed to opponents of the death penalty a promising line of attack, and they are still furious about it, comparing it to the court’s infamous 1857 decision that blacks slaves were property and not citizens.

“McCleskey is the Dred Scott decision of our time,” Anthony G. Amsterdam, a law professor at New York University, said in speech last year at Columbia.

“It is a decision for which our children’s children will reproach our generation and abhor the legal legacy we leave them,” said Professor Amsterdam, who worked on the McCleskey case and many other capital punishment landmarks.

The majority opinion in McCleskey was written by Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. After he retired, his biographer asked Justice Powell whether, given the chance, he would change his vote in any case.

“Yes,” Justice Powell said. “McCleskey v. Kemp.”