William Bradley: “I differ from some of my colleagues in that I believe that there is a place in our system of justice for capital…”

“I differ from some of my colleagues in that I believe that there is a place in our system of justice for capital punishment. At one extreme of the scales of justice, there are crimes that so brutally deny the humanity of the victim and the criminal that they merit only the most absolute punishment. But I know that none of my colleagues would disagree with my belief that there is no place in our system of justice for racial prejudice. The racial justice provisions of the House crime bill do not, as my colleague from New York contends, create race-weighted justice. They will not create a situation in which one person is put to death and another spared solely because one is white and one black. Instead, it is intended to determine whether there already is such a situation, and to help us put an end to it. I want to know, Mr. President, that there is plain justice in this country, not racial justice. I want to know that if a white man brutally murders a black man, his crime will be judged just as dispassionately as the crime of a black man who murders a white woman. Through most of our country's dark history of racial injustice, these crimes have not been treated alike. That's undeniable. Is this injustice part of our history, or part of our present? I want to know. There is plenty of reason to think that death sentences today are based on race.”