Death Row Inmates Get Reprieve with Racial Justice Act

[The Straight Story]

Death Row Inmates Get Reprieve with Racial Justice Act


North Carolina has been in the news recently, and not in a good way.

It made headlines when figures released by Public Policy Polling showed that only 24 percent of Republicans in the state believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States. Adding Democrats and Independents only brought the number up to 54 percent.

What an easy punchline, a political footnote that played into regional stereotypes.

What didn't get nearly as much notice was news that North Carolina put a law on the books to combat racial disparity in sentencing. The Racial Justice Act would allow defendants in death penalty cases and death row inmates the right to challenge prosecutions on grounds of bias. They could use statistics and trends of racial disparities in death sentences, and judges could consider that evidence, as well as testimony, to change a death sentence to life in prison without parole or stop prosecutors from filing a death penalty case to begin with.

Kentucky passed a similar bill in 1998. Several other states have policies to prevent racial bias in the trial process, such as in jury selection.

In North Carolina, Gov. Bev Perdue, who said she supports the death penalty, signed the bill. She said in The Charlotte Observer: "The Racial Justice Act ensures that when North Carolina hands down our state's harshest punishment to our most heinous criminals, the decision is based on the facts and the law, not racial prejudice."

The Rev. William Barber II, president of the NAACP North Carolina State Conference, said passage of the act "is a major step not only in North Carolina but potentially in the South for dealing with the continuing legacy of systemic racism in the application of the death penalty."

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/08/20/n-c-death-row-inmates-get-reprieve-with-racial-justice-act/