A new study of capital punishment suggests that it...

A new study of capital punishment suggests that it is applied unequally in rural and urban areas and that defendants whose victims are affluent are more likely to get the death penalty.Regarding race, the study found that white and nonwhite defendants were about equally likely to receive the death penalty. It also found no significant evidence that members of minorities who killed whites were more likely to be sentenced to death.But the study found striking differences in the way that urban and nonurban counties handled the death penalty.The Nebraska study looked at 177 homicides that were eligible for the death penalty in 1973 through 1999. Of those, 27 received the death penalty, and 3 have been executed. Read the full report and the Executive Summary at:http://www.nol.org/home/crimecom/homicide.htm