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The Los Angeles Times looks at five years' worth of homicides in Los Angeles County to determine what factors tended to make cases come out differently at every step along the criminal justice system. Results showed that only one in every three murders ended with a suspect caught and successfully prosecuted. And differences in the victim's race and education, and whether the case received any newspaper coverage, affected the odds of how a case would be handled, either affecting the probability a suspect would be caught or affecting the probability that the punishment would be severe. (Dec. 1-7, 16, 23, 1996)