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On 21 October 1994, the USA finally ratified the International Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination, 28 years after they signed it. Under the terms of the Convention, the US is obliged to report initially within one year and every two years thereafter on legislative, judicial, administrative and other measures taken to give effect to the Convention. To date, the US government has failed to submit any of these reports.
In a report addressing racism in the USA, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Racial Discrimination noted:
"...racism and racial discrimination persist in American society...sociological inertia, structural obstacles and individual resistance [are] hindering the emergence of an integrated society based on the equal dignity of the members of the American nation...various political and social components of American society also provide opportunities for residual racism and racial discrimination to linger on..."
The report declared in Recommendation 6 that measures "should be taken to abolish the death penalty, or failing that, to eliminate discriminatory application of the penalty." Characteristically, there was no response from the US authorities to the report.
When international bodies have found the United States to be guilty of discriminatory use of the death penalty, the nation's political leaders have reacted with scornful indignation. In 1997, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions conducted a research mission to the USA. In a letter to the US ambassador to the United Nations, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jesse Helms, asked: "Is this man confusing the United States with some other country, or is this an intentional insult to the US and our nation's legal system?"
The letter went on to urge the ambassador to "reverse all State Department cooperation with this absurd UN charade." The ambassador displayed his own contempt for the work of the Rapporteur when he replied to Senator Helms that the report would "gather dust". Based on his own investigations, the Special Rapporteur found that: "race, ethnic origin and economic status appear to be key determinants of who will, and who will not, receive a death sentence" in the United States.
The UN Special Rapporteurs are not the only international monitors to detect prejudice in the use of the death penalty. In 1996, the International Commission of Jurists published a report of its own investigative mission to the USA. Among its findings, the report concluded that "the administration of the death penalty in the United States will remain arbitrary, and racially discriminatory, and prospects of a fair hearing for capital offenders cannot (and will not) be assured" without substantial remedial steps, such as controlling prosecutorial discretion in seeking death sentences, ensuring jury selection procedures were free from racial or class bias and providing adequate legal representation to indigent defendants.
In 1996, the Organization of American States (OAS) Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found that the USA had violated William Andrews' right to equality before the law and his right to an impartial hearing, pursuant to Articles II and XXVI of the American Declaration of Rights and Duties of Man. The OAS based its decision on grave evidence of racial bias which undermined the fairness of his trial.
During Andrews' trial in Utah, court officials were handed a note that one of the jurors came across while having lunch. The note included a crude drawing of a man being hanged, alongside the words "Hang the nigger's"(sic). Andrews' attorneys requested a mistrial and the right to question jurors about the note; both requests were denied by the judge. Instead, the judge simply instructed the jurors to "ignore communications from foolish people." At no point did the judge, or any appeal court, attempt to discover who had authored the note or what effect it had upon the jurors.
The all-white jury sentenced Andrews to death, despite testimony from a survivor of the crime who swore that Andrews had already left the store by the time his co-defendant shot the victims. The witness testified that Andrews said "I'm afraid. I can't do it", before leaving the store.
White people convicted of committing appalling crimes in Utah frequently avoid the death penalty, even when charged with being the actual killers. According to the juries which convicted them, Richard Worthington took a hospital nurse and infants hostage before shooting the nurse; Lance Wood sodomized a male hitch-hiker and attached electrodes to his testicles before slitting his throat; Edward Deli shot three people as they returned home from Christmas shopping; Mark Hofmann used a car bomb to kill two leaders of the Mormon Church; Paul Franklin, an avowed racist, shot two young black men because they were jogging with white women. All of these defendants received terms of imprisonment; all were white.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights recommended that the US provide adequate compensation to Andrews' next of kin. US authorities replied that Andrews had received an impartial trial free of racial bias and that they therefore "could not agree with the Commission's findings, or carry out its recommendations."
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