"North Carolina Senate votes to repeal death row law," is the AP report filed by Tom Breen. It's via the Virginian Pilot.
The Republican-controlled state Senate voted Monday night to repeal a landmark 2009 state law that allows death row inmates to appeal their sentences by using statistical evidence to try and prove the taint of racial bias.
Since the House had earlier passed the legislation, the Senate vote sends the measure to the desk of Gov. Beverly Perdue, who signed the Racial Justice Act into law two years ago. A Perdue spokesman said she'll review the bill before making a decision on it. Under the current law, a death row inmate who successfully appeals the sentence would not be freed, but would spend life in prison without parole.
Prosecutors, joined by Republicans in the General Assembly, have been vocal critics of the law, saying it amounts to an unofficial moratorium on the death penalty that will clog up the state's courts with frivolous appeals by scores of death row inmates whose guilt is not in doubt.
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Supporters of the current law, though, argued that racial bias is not a distant feature of the past, but a factor that still plays a role in capital punishment cases, and that the Racial Justice Act is a necessary tool to ensure fairness in how the death penalty is administered.
"If you think race didn't play a factor in my case, in my being arrested, charged, and convicted, then you're not living here in North Carolina," said Darryl Hunt, who was exonerated in 2004 after serving 18 years in prison for the 1984 murder of Deborah Sykes. Hunt was cleared by DNA evidence, and another man subsequently pleaded guilty to the murder.
"Senate derails Racial Justice Act," by Craig Jarvis in the News & Observer.
The state Senate on Monday rewrote the Racial Justice Act, a two-year-old law that allowed death-row inmates to use statistical evidence of racial bias to challenge their sentences.
On a 27-17 vote, senators approved Senate Bill 9, titled No Discriminatory Purpose in the Death Penalty. It now goes to Gov. Bev Perdue. There was no immediate word on whether the governor would sign the bill.
Perdue did sign the Racial Justice Act into law in 2009, saying it would ensure death sentences were imposed "based on the facts and the law, not racial prejudice."
Republican lawmakers and the state's prosecutors tried to minimize the impact of the new law, insisting it was only a fix. "This is not a repeal of the Racial Justice Act," Sen. Thom Goolsby, a Republican from Wilmington, said on the Senate floor. "It's a reform, a modification."
But earlier in the day, in response to a question from Sen. Josh Stein, a Raleigh Democrat, the Senate staff acknowledged that passing the bill, SB9, returned the law to what it was before the Racial Justice Act went into effect.
"This is an utter and total repeal," Stein said.
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Sen. Floyd McKissick, a Durham Democrat who was the primary author of the Racial Justice Act, made his own impassioned speech to defeat the new bill. He asked fellow senators what they would do if they were accused of a crime and each time a prospective juror who was the same race was stricken from the jury. "We've come a very long way over the last 50 years," McKissick said. "We've made a lot of progress as a society and as a country. We can all share in that pride. But there's still remnants that exist, remnants of institutional racism, remnants of hatred in the hearts and minds of people."
"NC lawmakers vote to repeal death row law," by Laura Leslie for WRAL-TV.
The Republican-controlled state Senate voted Monday night to repeal a landmark 2009 state law that allows death row inmates to appeal their sentences by using statistical evidence to try and prove the taint of racial bias.
Since the House had earlier passed the legislation, the Senate vote sends the measure to the desk of Gov. Beverly Perdue, who signed the Racial Justice Act into law two years ago. A Perdue spokesman said she'll review the bill before making a decision on it.
"Bias on death row? North Carolina lawmakers now not so sure," is Richard Fausset's post at the Los Angeles Times.
The North Carolina Senate on Monday approved a bill that critics view as a gutting of the Racial Justice Act, the state law that gives death row inmates and death penalty defendants the ability to use statistics on racial bias as a way to challenge their prosecutions.
The original law was passed in 2009 by a Democratic-controlled Legislature and signed into law by Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue. But last November, Republicans won majorities in both houses, and many of them sided with state prosecutors who have argued that the law would overburden the justice system with new litigation and create a "backdoor deal" to end the death penalty in North Carolina.
The House approved the new bill in June. Now the issue presents a conundrum for Perdue, a death-penalty-supporting Democrat who has effectively navigated tricky political cross-currents in a state that voted for Barack Obama in 2008, only to give the GOP control of the Legislature for the first time in more than a century in 2010.
There's been no word from the governor's office on her next move.
Critics of the original law have questioned whether statistical analyses of death-penalty cases around the state should have any bearing on individual cases under review. Angie West, who lost a loved one to an inmate currently on death row, said at a news conference that it would be wrong to let the inmate off "simply because there's a statistic in another part of the state that says he should get a lighter sentence."
But supporters of the original law say the statistics paint a chilling picture of ongoing systemic bias against minorities. An oft-cited Michigan State University study found that a defendant in North Carolina was 2.6 times more likely to be sentenced to death in cases in which at least one victim was white.
"North Carolina’s Historic Fix to Death Penalty Racism Faces GOP Ax," by Jamilah King for Color Lines.
North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act is in trouble. The law has barely been on the books for two years, but in that short amount of time it’s caused a mountain of controversy.
The landmark piece of legislation, signed into law in 2009, allows death row inmates to appeal their sentence on the basis that racial bias played a role in their sentencing, and it allows inmates to bring statistics before judges to help make their case. If they can prove that it did, they win an opportunity to have their sentences commuted to life in prison. All but three of the state’s death row inmates have appealed their sentences.
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It’s an historic law with far-reaching implications (Kentucky is the only other state in the country that currently has a racial justice law). For a criminal justice system that’s rife with well-documented racial disparities, in some advocates’ eyes the law is an important legal step toward acknowledging that society’s rules don’t apply equally to everyone.
Editorial writer Doug Clark posts, "Improved RJA," at his Off the Record blog at the Greensboro News-Record.
The ratified bill prohibits a death sentence when "the State acted with discriminatory purpose in seeking the death penalty or in selecting the jury that sentenced the defendant, or one or more of the jurors acted with discriminatory purpose in the guilt‑innocence or sentencing phases of the defendant's trial."
Gone is the phony standard of statistical evidence not related to the case in question.
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The governor should sign the revised version into law.
If she thinks anyone on death row should be relieved of the death penalty, she has the power to commute his sentence to life in prison.
Earlier coverage of the North Carolina Racial Justice Act begins at the link.
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