E/CN.4/1995/78/Add.1 page 18 some cases as long as 100 years, whereas convictions for similar criminal charges are only a few years or less for those who have no such political or religious views. Of these 100 or more political prisoners, 18 are Puerto Ricans imprisoned for their efforts to "end United States colonialism" 32/ in their homeland. This past summer, Geronimo ji jaga Pratt, a former member of the Black Panther Party, who has been in prison since 1971 and who Amnesty International, among others, has said was convicted in violation of rights under the federal Constitution, was denied parole for the thirteenth time. 63. As to the death penalty, a number of studies and reports, including those by Congress, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, emphasize the racial discrimination prevalent in its application. 33/ Studies by the federal Government have also confirmed that racism plays a significant role in death penalty cases. A Government Accounting Office (GAO) study of 26 February 1990, for example, found a "pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing and imposition of the death penalty" and concluded that "those who murdered whites were found more likely to be sentenced to death than those who murdered blacks". In late 1988, Congress enacted the death penalty for murders committed by drug dealers. Of those targeted for death under this law between 1988 and 1993, 73 per cent were Black and 13 per cent Latino. As of September 1993, all of the subjects of death penalty prosecutions reportedly approved by the Clinton Administration have been Black. According to a 1992 report by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Legal Defense and Educational Fund, of the 2,588 persons then on death row, almost half (48.6 per cent) were people of colour: 38.9 were Black, 7.1 were Latino, 1.8 were Native American, 0.73 were Asian Americans and 0.50 per cent were unknown. In 1994, Congress none the less rejected a provision of the Crime Bill designed to ban the death penalty when it had manifestly been called for on racist grounds. 34/ G. Police violence 64. The GAO recently found in the wake of the Los Angeles rebellion that 47,000 claims of police brutality had been registered with the Justice Department over a period of seven years. That a national phenomenon had been identified, in the opinion of many, needed no further proof. However, under the Administration of President Bush, the Justice Department continued to suggest that no discernible pattern of abuse existed and further asserted that complaints did not actually prove that any violations had occurred. The GAO study revealed, from a representative sample of 15,000 cases, that not only did a pattern of abuse exist, but that there were 181 identifiable jurisdictions within which the issue of police brutality was most pronounced. For most observers, the only thing unique about the Rodney King beating was that it was caught on video tape and that he lived to tell about it; others died as a consequence of police beatings. 65. The use of excessive force by police against African Americans, Asian Americans, Arabs and Indians has been cited as one of the most pressing human rights problems facing the United States. Many testimonies that the Special Rapporteur is not able to reproduce here, owing to lack of space, were heard on this issue during the hearings attended by him in New York on 15 October 1994. Currently, no federal law exists that specifically addresses