Yet Another Way

in which race continues to matter, from an interview at MSNBC.com:

Holding a whole bunch of stuff constant, including several political variables, we found that if a black person killed a white person they were more likely to get executed. If a Hispanic killed a white person they were also more likely, but this probability wasn't quite as strong. There is more than a twofold greater risk that an African-American who killed a white will be executed than a white person who kills a nonwhite victim. A Hispanic is at least 1.4 times more likely to be executed if such an offender kills a white. Both findings are statistically significant. Also, the findings indicate that blacks who kill nonwhites are less likely to be executed than blacks who kill whites, which shows that the postsentencing capital-punishment process continues to place greater value on white lives.

Here's the article the author is speaking about:

David Jacobs, Zhenchao Qian, Jason T. Carmichael, and Stephanie L. Kent,
"Who Survives on Death Row? An Individual and Contextual Analysis,"
American Sociological Review 72, Number 4 * August 2007