Gov.-elect Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. has vowed to rescind Maryland's death penalty moratorium as soon as he's sworn into office. If so, seven inmates currently on death row - six of whom are black - could soon be eligible for execution.

Yet a statewide poll conducted earlier this year found that at least 60 percent of African-Americans support the current moratorium on the use of the death penalty.

Consider: Maryland has one of the highest percentages of black death row inmates in the country - more than 70 percent. Although most murder victims are black, the 12 men on Maryland's death row were convicted of killing white people. Nine of them were convicted in Baltimore County.

Several prominent people have raised concerns about the fairness of the death penalty, including two sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices who have publicly expressed reservations.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor told a law conference last year, "If statistics are any indication, the system may well be allowing some innocent defendants to be executed."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in a speech that she had "yet to see a death case among the dozens coming to the Supreme Court on the eve of execution petitions in which the defendant was well represented at trial."

In fact, the Supreme Court has recently agreed to consider the case of a Maryland death row inmate, Kevin Wiggins, who claims he was sentenced to death because of incompetent representation.

Mr. Ehrlich believes the best way to handle capital cases is by reviewing each death warrant case by case. But this approach ignores the factor of systemic bias in the criminal justice system.

African-Americans and other people of color deal with a broad range of economic, educational and political inequities that are embedded deeply in our culture. Racial profiling, police brutality, poor legal representation and false imprisonment persist in a system that often fails to deliver equal justice under the law.

These factors combine to create a greater likelihood that black defendants will receive the death penalty for crimes comparable to those of their white counterparts.

The recent sniper shootings in suburban Washington underscore the highly charged emotional environment that often surrounds high-profile death penalty cases.

The debate that followed the arrests of the sniper suspects was not about their guilt or innocence but whether Maryland, Virginia or the federal government would most efficiently send the men to their deaths.

Yet the finality of the death penalty requires that lawmakers, investigators, prosecutors, juries and judges proceed with the utmost restraint, guarding against the impulse to rush to judgment.

This is why Mr. Ehrlich's decision to rescind the moratorium is premature.

In Illinois - the first state to impose a moratorium on executions after the exoneration of 13 inmates - Republican Gov. George Ryan appointed a 14-member commission to study the death penalty. It proposed that before a prosecutor can seek the death penalty, he must first get approval from the state's attorney general, three prosecutors and a retired judge to ensure that the law is applied uniformly rationally.

The Maryland General Assembly has not had an opportunity to review the findings of a study commissioned to determine whether the application of the death penalty in this state is racially biased. Although the study won't be released until later this month, it is clear that problems exist.

Before lifting the moratorium, Mr. Ehrlich should allow the General Assembly and Maryland's citizens to undertake a comprehensive review.

To do otherwise is to turn a blind eye to the larger issues of systemic racism in the criminal justice system. Reviewing an individual petition on the eve of an execution does nothing to ensure accuracy and fairness in the imposition of the death penalty.

I trust that Mr. Ehrlich's campaign promise to care about issues that are important to black people will start here and now, at this critical juncture, on this critical issue.

Obie Patterson, a Democrat, represents the 26th District in the Maryland House of Delegates and is chair of the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland.