In three days, barring acts of God, the Supreme Court or Virginia governor Jim Gilmore, Derek Barnabei will be dead of a governmentally administered overdose of pancurium bromide and potassium chloride. There is nothing special about Barnabei. To many, he simply is another cold-blooded killer who needs to be executed before he can get out and kill again. Then comes the distressing part. Like many awaiting execution, Barnabei has requested that biological evidence used against him undergo DNA analysis, which he insists will clear him. In a comedic twist worthy of prime time, Virginia can’t find it. Generally, blood, hair, and semen samples don’t just get up and walk away, so they have launched an investigation to search for the missing evidence. Iin lieu of calling the Hardy boys, Virginia seems insistent on making sure to get Barnabei executed right on time. After all, Virginians don’t want a government that can’t keep on schedule. This is one of dozens of problems with the death penalty in this country. Whether you loathe the death penalty or support it, at the very least, you ought to demand death penalty reforms. The problem is that in fact, few demonstrate a desire for reform. In the case of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), it refuses to demand reform simply because it believes that this would undermine their stance against the death penalty’s existence. There are numerous issues that need to be analyzed. Even death penalty supporters should see our current situation as unethical. First and foremost, the death penalty needs to end its discrimination. Especially considering religion as a factor, capital punishment is highly discriminatory. Take for example the case of Karla Faye Tucker. After Tucker brutally murdered two people with a pickax, she was sentenced to death. While in prison, she became a born-again Christian and all of a sudden had appearances on “The 700 Club” and had Rev. Pat Robertson picketing her execution. Why? Simply because of her newfound Christianity. Thankfully, for the sake of religious freedom, Tucker’s execution was carried out. However, the fundamental flaw showed itself nonetheless: clemency often is affected by a person’s religion. Frankly, it seems unlikely anyone would have come to Tucker’s defense if she became a born again Jew or a born again Wiccan. If that was the case, Robertson, Ralph Reed and the whole gang probably would have raced to push the button to start the lethal injection. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 664 people have been executed since 1976. In all that time, four women have been executed. Now, I, as a strong supporter of equal rights for women, refuse to cope with the fact that they simply cannot receive equal punishment for heinous crimes. According to the DPIC, women make up only 1.5 percent of the population on death row and only .6 percent of those executed. All told, that means that women are 2.5 times less likely to be executed, even if they are sentenced to death, which is already a small number. The Department of Justice states that 12.6 percent of homicides are committed by women. And yet they make up only 1.5 percent of death row. This shows conscious discrimination against men in the state courts of the United States. Furthermore, we have to consider the method by which someone is sentenced to death. America operates under a jury system, but most Americans seem to despise the very idea of jury duty. In the end, since many people can avoid jury duty due to having jobs which are deemed essential to the public or having other excuses, juries are essentially composed of those very few who seem to cherish it as a civic duty and those who were too dumb to avoid it. By reforming the jury system or moving towards having professional juries, it would be a system which would at least be staffed by competent professionals rather than a few retirees, a few active citizens and a bunch of uneducated rubes who can be easily swayed by simple legal tricks. The death penalty has so many more problems with it, ranging from economic discrimination, age discrimination, and even the unanswered question as to whether it serves any practical purpose. Yet we still execute people at a growing rate. Without some sort of reform of the system, we can no longer conclude that there is anything ethical about the system. As for Derek Barnabei, he may very well be guilty. Nonetheless, there is no need to wait to find out until after he’s been put to death. It would take little effort to grant.