MD. Prepares to Execute Black Man

• Death row inmate's lawyers allege racial bias

Lawyers seeking to have death row inmate Heath William Burch's sentence thrown out have filed court papers pointing to the University of Maryland death penalty study that suggested race plays a role in the state's application of the death penalty. Burch, 35, is the first black man to be scheduled for execution since the Maryland study was released in January last year. The execution is set for the week of Dec. 6, but a judge has granted a stay of execution while his attorneys attempt their new legal challenges.  In the motion filed Monday in Prince George's County Circuit Court challenging his sentence as illegal, Burch's lawyers argue that the study shows that Burch's situation - a black defendant and white victims - is "the one that is most subject to discrimination throughout the process, from the decision to seek the death penalty, to the decision to maintain the prosecution as a death penalty case." "If you look at the study, the way at which the prosecutors seek death sentences in Maryland is skewed in white-victim cases, and it's skewed even worse with white victim cases and black defendants," Michael E. Lawlor, one of Burch's attorneys, said yesterday. Prince George's County State's Attorney Glenn F. Ivey, who did not oppose the stay of execution, said his office had not thoroughly read the motion and could not comment on it. Burch's lawyers pointed out that professor Raymond Paternoster's study concluded that the state is more likely to seek the death penalty when a black defendant is accused of killing a white person. Blacks who kill whites are 2 1/2 times as likely to be sentenced to death as whites who kill whites, the study found.  [more]