the lil' jesuit dude has blogged a couple of time about the issue of race as concerns the comments of district attorney al schmutzer, jr...

it is worth noting something that david kaczynski shared with the audience last tuesday when he spoke at the university of tennessee in knoxville...

david's brother ted was (is) suffering from serious mental illness (schizophrenia i believe) and david's belief that his brother would receive treatment as part of his being held accountable for his actions and protecting us from more potential harm (as opposed to say, the prosecutor seeking to execute ted)...

so when the prosecutor in fact did seek to have the federal government ultimately kill ted, david's family was fortunate to have the resources to hire excellent attorneys who were able to defeat the prosecutor's efforts to get a death sentence for ted kaczynski...

enter stage right, bill babbitt whose brother manny, a vietnam-era marine veteran, was also severely mentally ill when an elderly grandmother died of a heart attack during a robbery he was committing... the babbitt family was too poor to afford good counsel. manny's first lawyer took their money and then dropped the case. the second, a court-appointed attorney, refused to allow blacks on the jury, drank heavily during the trial and was later disbarred and sued for racism.

white family, good resources, horrible crime by someone with schizophrenia = no death penalty

black family, few, scarce resources, tragic crime involving someone with schizophrenia = death penalty

race intersecting with class in the death penalty system = horrible disparity in the dispensing of "justice"

peace out - <3