``Georgia seems to be the test state,'' said attorney Dan Summer of Gainesville, Ga., who has prosecuted and defended death penalty cases. ``Maybe it's a historical fluke. But Georgia is in the center of what's called the Death Belt.''

In the 38 states with a death penalty, it takes an average of 11 years for cases to move from sentence to execution. In Georgia, an average of 101/2 years passed between sentencing and execution for the last 22 inmates put to death. Legal experts estimate the new law could cut that in half.

Click on the image above for a full-sized version of the graphic "The death sentence by county." Special

Albert M. Pearson of Atlanta served as legal counsel for a committee engaged by the U.S. Supreme Court to devise a way to balance a fair, yet faster appeal process.

The idea, Mr. Pearson said, was to trade one trip through the appeal process for a mechanism ensuring that defendants receive quality legal representation at each appeal stage. A good bit of the committee's report became the 1996 Effective Death Penalty legislation, except for one thing - there's no promise of quality representation.

``Since the founding of this country, how we convict someone has been very important to us. You don't have a promise of a perfect trial, but you do for a fair one,'' said Jerry Curtis Nesset, a University of Georgia School of Law professor.

``I understand the frustration people feel when someone is obviously guilty.... But we'll really be sacrificing something in the country if we short-circuit the legal process,'' Mr. Nesset said.

Mr. Garrett, who has represented a number of people charged with capital murder, believes nothing really has changed since the death penalty was struck down in 1972.

``There is no meaningful basis for distinguishing the few murder cases in which the death penalty is still imposed and the many cases in which it is not,'' Mr. Garrett said.

Soon after Mr. McClain was sentenced to death, Mr. Garrett defended Chester X. Simpkins, who also was convicted but sentenced to life in prison. Mr. Simpkins took part in the robbery and murder of Beverly Williford, 62, at a Gordon Highway pawnshop on May 18, 1994.

``There were few disputed facts in these two cases,'' Mr. Garrett said. ``Each involved a murder committed during an armed robbery of a business. These two cases make clear that the sentence a defendant in a murder case receives depends upon any number of arbitrary factors, rather than how bad was the crime or how incorrigible the accused.''

Added Mr. Nesset: ``Defense attorneys will point that out to you until they're blue in the face and your ears are tired. (But) the courts generally don't want to take on this type of question.''

Augusta District Attorney Danny Craig got his first death verdict as a prosecutor in Mr. McClain's case, one of more than 20 capital murder cases he has prosecuted.

From a low of two pending death-penalty cases six months ago, Mr. Craig now has six.

``We evaluate these cases individually and unfortunately, we are unable to alter the timing of the commission of the murders that we think warrant the death penalty,'' Mr. Craig said.

Attorney Michael Mears of the state's Multicounty Public Defender's Office doesn't buy prosecutors' insistence that only certain homicides are capital murder cases.

``The real problem with the criminal justice system ... prosecutors are using criminal cases to appease the public and judges are afraid they won't get re-elected,'' Mr. Mears said.

Courts have sidestepped the question of arbitrariness, just as they have resisted the idea that racism may have something to do with the death penalty, Mr. Nesset said.

One of the most volatile decisions in death penalty law occurred 10 years ago in a Georgia case. The Baldus Study indicated that blacks who kill whites are much more likely to receive the death penalty. The author of the study compared details of more than 2,000 Georgia homicides to determine what circumstances raise murder cases to death penalty status.

``I cannot imagine how you could construct that (Baldus) study any better,'' Mr. Nesset said. It wasn't that the U.S. Supreme Court faulted the study; the court's majority just refused to consider the results, he said.

``Even though the court said (race) didn't matter, defense and prosecuting attorneys are very tuned in to the anecdotal evidence, and I think both sides are concerned,'' Mr. Nesset said.

According to data collected by The Augusta Chronicle about Georgia's current death row population, 91 of the 115 inmates killed white victims. Only two white inmates killed black victims.

Of the death row inmates, 51 are black, 63 are white and one is an American Indian. It costs the state $71 a day to keep an inmate on death row.

Former state Attorney General Michael Bowers said he believes a disproportionate number of blacks are on death row because they committed capital murder, not because of discrimination.

``If that's true, then the NBA discriminates (because the majority of professional basketball players are black). It's that simple,'' he said, referring to the National Basketball Association.

For 20 years, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun maintained that the death penalty was constitutional. He changed his view in 1994. He wrote that it was impossible to mold the death penalty to eliminate discrimination and arbitrariness without sacrificing fairness to the individual.

Mr. McClain now has two appeal levels left - state and federal habeas corpus reviews. The appeals won't deal with guilt or innocence, only the fairness of his trial and conviction. Although Mr. McClain's appeal time will be shorter than for death row inmates in the past, Mr. Brown can expect to wait four or five years to see whether the death sentence will be carried out.

For Mr. Brown, only Mr. McClain's death will bring closure.