The Court also held that McCleskey would have to prove direct racial discrimination rather than infer it from statistical data. Critics of the decision have left an erroneous impression that the majority opinon upheld the death penalty even though it acknowledged that study had proven discrimination. This is not the case. The Court, however, should be criticized for failing to remand the case for a ruling on the validity of the method and interpretation of findings of the Baldus study. While the study controlled for over 200 variables, it failed to control for a number of additional salient variables such as prosecutorial discretion, prosecutor and juror race, and victim social class. Additional problems in interpreting the Baldus findings stem from the possibility of subtle researcher bias, the fact that defendant race does not seem to result in sentencing disparity, and the lack of victim race effects in studies in other States. Finally, there is a contradiction in the moral elitism shown by abolistionists who plead for mercy for killers rather than justice for the families of victims.