LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - Prosecutors and judges handle murder cases differently in urban and rural areas of Nebraska, but there is no disparate treatment of minorities in death penalty cases, according to a state study released Wednesday.

The study by the state Crime Commission also found that prosecutors are more likely to seek the death penalty in cases where the murder victim is socially prominent or wealthy.

The Legislature ordered the study in 1999 to determine whether such factors as race, gender, religion and economic status come into play when death sentences are imposed.

Three men - two black and one white - have been put to death in Nebraska since the state resumed executions in 1994 after a 35-year hiatus. Of the nine men on Nebraska's death row, seven are white, one is black and the other is American Indian.

The study was ordered after Gov. Mike Johanns vetoed a measure that would have made Nebraska the first state to place a moratorium on executions.

More than 700 homicide cases since 1973 were examined. The 175 cases eligible for the death penalty during that time resulted in 27 death sentences.

Of 130 white defendants in those cases, 15 percent were sentenced to die in the state's electric chair. Of 45 minority defendants, 16 percent were given the death penalty.

The study found that prosecutors in urban areas were more willing to seek the death penalty. Urban prosecutors also advanced capital cases to trial at a higher rate than their rural counterparts, who more often opted for plea agreements, thereby avoiding a possible death sentence.

However, judges in urban counties impose death sentences at a lower rate than rural judges, creating "an evenhanded racial distribution of death sentences among all death-eligible offenders," the report said.

"It is clear that there is some disparity in how we administer the death penalty," said state Sen. Kermit Brashear, a death penalty supporter, who said he had not seen the report.

"It appears that the report is substantiating what I believed - that it is not overtly racial, but that it is secondarily racial when one considers how we prosecute crimes in the urban counties and how we prosecute crimes in the rural counties."

Attorney General Don Stenberg said he was pleased with the report.

"The study refutes, at least for Nebraska, several of the criticisms of the death penalty that are often put forward," Stenberg said. "In Nebraska, by law, the death penalty is reserved for the worst of the worst."