ABSTRACT
As any student of the death penalty in America knows, the chance that a person charged with a capital crime will live or die depends greatly on race, social class, and—perhaps most important—where the alleged crime was committed. First and foremost is the question of whether the defendant comes to court in one of the thirty-eight states where capital punishment is on the books. If he (or occasionally she) does, the outcome will differ greatly state by state and county by county, depending chiefly on the quality of the local defense bar, the trial judge, and the district attorney, who alone decides whether to seek capital punishment. For all these reasons, the odds on death are particularly high in Alabama, especially in the port town of Mobile, and most of all in the courtroom of Judge Ferrill McRae.
