Race is the most important factor in determining who is to be executed and for that reason alone capital punishment should be stopped.

Top death penalty lawyer, Steven Hawkins spoke at the annual Amnesty International Colin Horsefield Lecture last night and Hamilton Lion's lunch at M.R. Onions Restaurant.

At home in the US, Mr. Hawkins has defended more than 100 death row inmates in ten years of practice and is the director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

A Graduate of Harvard University and New York University Law School, he has been part of the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People's legal team.

He is part of a team now taking the appeal of the US's most feted death row inmate, Pennsylvania's Mumia Abu-Jamal, all the way to the Supreme Court.

When asked about Bermuda and the death penalty, Mr. Hawkins said: "Bermuda is the only British Overseas Territory with it on the books. My view is that hopefully Bermuda will follow suit with the majority of other countries and abandon it.'' Using statistics and both recent and historic case histories, Mr. Hawkins paints a bleak picture of biased judges and uncaring prosecutors.

Speaking about Abu-Jamal, Mr. Hawkins said the trial judge Albert Sabo was responsible for about 90 percent of Pennsylvania's death row prisoners.

But while Judge Sabo is a "hanging judge'', 80 percent of the men he has sent to death row are black men.

Mr. Hawkins also cited the case against Shareef Cousin in New Orleans, Louisiana, who was released in January after three years on that state's death row.

The 19-year-old was arrested three years ago and the New Orleans Police were under "tremendous pressure'' to solve the murder of a tourist in the French Quarter.

Police relied on an informant's testimony that Mr. Cousin confessed to him, while another state witness was not wearing her glasses which she depended on.

But through the work of the NCADP, it was established that Mr. Cousin was taken home by his basketball coach just 20 minutes before the murder and the woman told officers shortly after the incident she could not identify the killer.

Mr. Hawkins said these and many other cases point to a systematic persecution based on the race of the accused.

"No society has ever practised the policy of an eye for an eye,'' he said.

"There are 23,000 murders in the US each year. But I can tell you that in death penalty cases, considerations of class and race play the major role in convictions.'' "And often it is probably due to not getting the best lawyers because you are poor,'' Mr. Hawkins said. "Not everyone can afford Johnnie Cochrane.'' "Often these people are facing the trial of their lives and they are saddled with awful lawyers,'' he added. "Don't forget, people make their political careers on their lives in a district attorney's office.'' He added: "The death penalty is a punishment reserved for our poor and mentally retarded. As we all know the mentally challenged will confessed to things they didn't do.'' And the families of victims get no joy from having an execution, despite the bravado that many show before it.

"I've sat next to a man who waited 15 years to see his daughter's killer die,'' Mr. Hawkins said. "In the end, in that small room, where you're right there, it was the last place he wanted to be.'' Death row abolitionist Steven Hawkins is leading the fight in the US to free journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal from the executioner.

CONFERENCE CON