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Kenneth Culp Davis1 The Supreme Court cited the Kenneth Culp Davis quote above when it rejected a challenge to Georgia's capital punishment scheme as racially discriminatory in McCleskey v. Kemp? McCleskey provided the Court with powerful evidence of racial bias in Georgia's administration of the death penalty.3 Specifically, McCleskey relied on a study by David Baldus and his colleagues finding that a defendant who killed a white victim was 4.3 times more likely to get the death penalty than a similarly situated defendant who killed a Black victim.4 The Court assumed the validity of Baldus's findings but still ruled against McCleskey because it accepted disproportionate results as the price to be paid for allowing juries to spare some defendants a death sentence.5 As the opinion by Justice Powell put it, \"a capital punishment system that did not allow for discretionary acts of leniency 'would be totally alien to our notions of criminal justice. Officials have discretion to dispense mercy across the range of decisions in the administration of criminal law and punishment.11 Police officers could elect not to stop or arrest someone. While we could use better data on who is applying for clemency to better analyze grant rates in terms of the total applicant pool, the available information shows that women are more likely to get clemency than men and that white clemency seekers are generally more likely to get relief than Black people and other people of color seeking clemency.17 The most recent comprehensive study looked at data from thirty-nine states and found \"a significant and troubling racial gap in grants,\" with non-white applicants being far less likely to receive relief.18 Studies of clemency grants in particular jurisdictions have mirrored these findings.

When Hurricane Katrina hit Mississippi on August 29, 2005, it unleashed the costliest natural disaster in American history, and the third deadliest. Haley Barbour had been Mississippi's governor for only twenty months when he assumed responsibility for guiding his pummeled, stricken state's recovery and rebuilding efforts. America's Great Storm is not only a personal memoir of his role in that recovery, but also a sifting of the many lessons he learned about leadership in a time of massive crisis. For the book, the authors interviewed more than forty-five key people involved in helping Mississippi recover, including local, state, and federal officials as well as private citizens who played pivotal roles in the weeks and months following Katrina's landfall. In addition to covering in detail the events of September and October 2005, chapters focus on the special legislative session that allowed casinos to build on shore; the role of the recovery commission chaired by Jim Barksdale; a behind-the-scenes description of working with Congress to pass an unprecedented, multi-billion-dollar emergency disaster assistance appropriation; and the enormous roles played by volunteers in rebuilding the entire housing, transportation, and education infrastructure of South Mississippi and the Gulf Coast. A final chapter analyzes the leadership skills and strategies Barbour employed on behalf of the people of his state, observations that will be valuable to anyone tasked with managing in a crisis.