Since 1976 there have been 1,434 executions in the United States, and in addition to those executions since 1973, 156 of those on death row have been exonerated (Facts About the Death Penalty, 2016). In 2012, the National Research Council published a report titled Deterrence and the Death Penalty, which cited studies that supported a correlation with the death penalty and lower homicide rates. However this is not true, the death penalty has no effect on crime, especially the murder rate. Furthermore, it is remiss of policymakers to rely on such reasoning to determine the continued validity of the death penalty for a wide variety of capital crimes. Separate studies conducted between 1993 and 2014 reveal that there are undertones of racial bias that lead to black defendants being sentenced to the death penalty more often when the victim is white, than vice versa. Given the racial stereotypes surrounding African-Americans regarding drugs, and the now notoriously baseless “War on Drugs,” subjecting those who traffic large quantities of drugs to the death penalty would be a gross abuse of the justice system with its variety of