The death penalty degrades society and does little to deter murder and other crimes. For those reasons and more, we are heartened that the New Hampshire jury that convicted John Brooks of the capital crimes of murder for hire and murder during a kidnapping declined to order him executed. Instead, Brooks, the multi-millionaire former owner of Manchester's PolyVac Inc., will serve life without parole.

To decide whether Brooks should be executed, jurors had to consider a host of relevant factors that could bear on whether he should be shown mercy or made to pay the ultimate penalty for his crimes.

Jurors rejected the most absurd of the defense team's arguments - that Brooks deserved clemency because he played the trumpet, was a success in business, and was known to be hard worker. They agreed that several had merit. Chief among those was the knowledge that Brook's co-defendants, including the men who actually committed the killing, received lesser sentences in exchange for their cooperation. Surprisingly to us, they also agreed to consider Brook's upbringing in a household with an alcoholic father and the possibility that he could make a constructive contribution in prison. The first factor is a circumstance shared by millions. As for the second, though jurors may not have had all the facts, Brooks history suggests that he is equally likely to be a destructive force in prison.

The jury found that all but one of the aggravating factors cited by the prosecution to prove that Brooks deserved to die had merit. They nonetheless decided to be merciful. Unless the jurors agree to talk, the reasons for their decision may never be known.

Two statements in the news report on Brooks's sentencing Thursday leapt from the page. One was prosecutor Kirsten Wilson's recognition that in the end, the decision to inflict capital punishment is "an individual moral judgment for each juror. The law is set up in a way that makes it incredibly difficult to sentence someone to death, and it should be that way."

She's right, but even in a system with sufficient checks to make execution highly unlikely, error and bias exist.

The other statement was made by Monica Foster, a member of Brooks's defense team. She argued that the state wasted taxpayer money by seeking the death penalty, since juries don't "kill" people like Brooks, a successful businessman with no criminal record.

Foster's statement was obnoxious. It is an argument for abandoning the premise that justice under the law should be equal. It is also, in too many cases and too many states, a true statement.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, social status, wealth and race, both of the killer and the victim, do much to determine whether a convicted killer will live or die.

In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court found it "incontestable" that exacting the death penalty was unconstitutionally cruel and unusual if the decision was based in any way on a defendant's "race, religion, wealth, social position or class." But the decision to kill in the name of the state or to spare someone found guilty of a capital crime is made by human beings. Prejudice, conscious or unconscious, will always be present.

The death penalty can never be administered equally, and thus should not be administered at all.