But defense attorneys counter that since not many potential jurors are willing to state such a position so bluntly, few actually get excluded on those grounds. And they stress that the effects of death-qualification on the racial composition of juries can be quite stark.

In a 1994 study, for example, Haney and coauthors Aida Hurtado and Luis Vega reported that while minorities accounted for 18.5 percent of the people in the California jury pools they examined, they represented 26.3 percent of those excluded from jury panels through the death-qualifying process.

A North Carolina jury study conducted in 1982 found an even greater disparity, with 55.2 percent of black potential jurors being excluded during the death-penalty qualifying process in contrast to 20.7 percent of whites. Studies also indicate that women tend to be excluded, since they are also more likely to oppose the death penalty.

The net effect is that -- despite Supreme Court rulings that excluding jurors because of race is grounds for a mistrial -- prosecutors can achieve much the same result without specifically using race as the criterion. "Death-qualifying a jury basically eliminates half of the potential black jurors," agrees David Bruck, a South Carolina defense attorney who specializes in death-penalty cases. "It's quite an ethnic cleansing that goes on and it is very disturbing."

The right to excuse jurors for cause is important because both sides in a criminal case are granted only a limited number of so-called "peremptory challenges," which allow them to dismiss potential jurors without having to offer any reason at all.

Prosecutors know that death-qualifying a jury is a great way to help ensure a conviction. That, say experts, is one reason why many of them -- particularly in jurisdictions with high death-penalty rates like Texas, Florida, Illinois, Virginia, California and Pennsylvania -- deliberately overcharge in murder cases even where they know the death penalty is not appropriate or likely.

In other words, the process can lead to higher conviction rates -- and most likely to more wrongful convictions -- not just in capital cases, but in other murder cases, too.

In Philadelphia, District Attorney Lynne Abraham seeks the death penalty from the outset in an astonishing 85 percent of murder cases, according to a study from the city's public defender's office. One reason for the Philadelphia district attorney's predilection for capital cases may be a jury selection training tape prepared in the mid-1980s by then Assistant District Attorney Jack McMahon.

In that tape, which is featured in the appeal by black journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal of his 1982 death sentence for the killing of a white Philadelphia cop, McMahon urges prosecutors to seek to impose the death penalty in as many cases as possible. That way, he explains helpfully, they then get the benefit of death-qualifying jurors, and with their peremptory challenges they can remove even those who express vague or minor concerns about imposing the ultimate sanction.

Abraham's office did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment.

Ironically, McMahon, now in private practice, has become a vocal critic of the very practice he once championed. "The reason district attorneys like Abraham so frequently seek the death penalty is that they get a conviction-prone jury," says McMahon, who now defends clients in capital cases. "Now they'll all tell you they don't do that, but they're full of crap and they know it. No one who's been working in this business would say that if they were honest. The whole process of death-qualification is terribly unfair."

McMahon insists that he hasn't had a change of heart. "I've always known this to be true," he explains. "But when you're a prosecutor you do what works to your advantage as a prosecutor. It's permissible, so you take advantage of it. But I will say that now that I'm on the defense side, I can see what a handicap it is for the defense."

In Abu-Jamal's 1982 murder trial in Philadelphia, the jury pool was in fact gutted of blacks during the death-penalty screening conducted by prosecutor Joseph McGill, despite objections raised by the defendant's attorney. In a city that is almost 44 percent black, the former Black Panther ended up with a single African-American on the jury that convicted him and sentenced him to death. In addition to screening out more than 20 black jurors through the death-qualification process, McGill used his peremptory challenges to eliminate another 11 black potential jurors who hadn't expressed any particular concern about the death penalty.

The National Association of Attorneys General takes no position on the issue of the fairness of death-penalty qualifying of juries.

But one academic expert who does defend jury qualifying in death-penalty cases is Paul Cassell, a law professor at the University of Utah College of Law and a former federal prosecutor. A death-penalty advocate who served as an attorney for the families of victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Cassell questions the accuracy and significance of the jury attitudinal surveys cited to challenge death-qualifying.

"I am not sure that juror attitudes carry over into the convicting or sentencing of people," he says. While conceding that he is not aware of any studies refuting the claim that death-qualified juries are more conviction-prone, he insists that the argument remains unproved.

Meanwhile, critics of death-penalty qualifying say the problem is not just that the impaneled jurors are more inclined to listen to prosecutors. The very process of death-qualifying, they say, can bias potential jurors against the defendant.

Consider this. In any other criminal trial, whether it's petty larceny, assault with a firearm or attempted murder or rape, attorneys are expressly barred from discussing possible penalties before or during the trial. The reason: Courts have long felt that discussing the penalty could encourage the jurors to start assuming that the defendant is somehow guilty.

"Yet in death-penalty cases, where the issue of guilt or innocence is most crucial, we go ahead and discuss the ultimate penalty every time before the trial," says Santa Cruz psychology professor Haney.

We all laugh when the Queen of Hearts in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" says, "Sentence first -- verdict afterwards." But in this country's capital trials, that's basically what's going on.

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