Robertson, mind you, is a former apartheid-regime apologist whose Christian Coalition put out a 1996 voter guide widely criticized as racist. But on Sunday's ``Meet the Press,'' he said, ``What's happened (with the death penalty) is an unequal application of justice that weighs heavily on minorities, African-Americans in particular.''

America's execution of the death penalty -- wordplay intended -- has long been flawed. Racial bias, the execution of teen-age and mentally retarded killers, and the railroading of poor suspects have finally combined to make the death penalty moratorium a hot issue in this election year.

A landmark study by professors at the University of Iowa found that if the victim in a capital case is white, the chance of the perpetrator getting the death penalty is four times greater than if the victim is black. Unlike most other Western nations, we execute teen-age killers, as well as the mentally retarded. (Witness Candidate Clinton's execution of a self-lobotomized Arkansas inmate, Ricky Ray Rector, in 1992 -- conveniently timed to distract from the Gennifer Flowers scandal and make him look tough on crime.) And since the cost of counsel in a capital case is a quarter of a million dollars, many poor defendants get lawyers who are lax or criminally neglectful. A Chicago Tribune investigation found that 33 individuals sentenced to death in Illinois since the the state reinstated capital punishment in 1977 were represented by lawyers who had been disbarred or suspended.

America's death row, where every judgment should be beyond reproach, again and again snares the hapless and hopeless behind its bars, especially poor black men. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, about 620 people have been executed since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty 24 years ago, while 85 have been freed. One of those long-suffering men is Anthony Porter, who walked free from Illinois' death row after 16 years behind bars. At one moment, Porter was just 48 hours from execution, but his low IQ, measured at just 51, got him a reprieve while the state evaluated his fitness for execution. Still, it took the crusading Northwestern University journalism professor David Protess and his students to secure a videotaped confession from the real killer and free Porter from death row.

The Porter case shook Illinois Gov. George Ryan, who defied his own record as a Republican death penalty supporter and took the unprecedented step of calling for a statewide moratorium on executions. ``I cannot support a system which, in its administration, has proven so fraught with error,'' he said, announcing the moratorium, ``and which has come so close to the ultimate nightmare, the state's taking an innocent life.'' Since 1977, 13 men have been released from death row in his state, while 12 have been executed.

Today, federal lawmakers from Illinois are taking the lead in the moratorium movement. Jesse Jackson Jr., the Democratic congressman from Chicago's South Side, co-sponsored the Accuracy in Judicial Administration Act of 2000, which calls for a minimum seven-year moratorium on executions across the United States. Four black men from Jackson's district -- now known as the Ford Heights Four -- were freed from jail, two from death row, after the team from Northwestern found that police and prosecutors withheld evidence and coached a key witness. In a move to give wrongly convicted inmates a fighting chance at freedom, another Illinois congressman, Republican Ray LaHood, is co-sponsoring the Innocence Protection Act, which would ensure that poor inmates get competent legal counsel and access to DNA testing and that the justice system preserves biological evidence. Though it doesn't go as far as the moratorium bill, the Innocence Protection Act runs directly counter to a deeply flawed 1996 law, the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which has compromised inmates' ability to mount appeals.

Although the American Bar Association has called for a death penalty moratorium, and other states, including Maryland and New Jersey, are considering such a move, any federal legislation faces an uphill battle. Any of the presidential candidates could give the movement a much-needed boost, but so far their leadership has been lacking. Of course, the only candidate with the power to call a death penalty time-out right now is George W. Bush, but inmates awaiting appeal don't dare hold their breath. After all, the state Dubya governs has put the Grim Reaper on overtime, accounting for roughly a third of all executions in the country.

Chideya is a New York journalist

© 2000 PioneerPlanet / St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press