That's the title of an editorial in today's New York Times. It begins our roundup of coverage of the North Carolina Racial Justice Act.
North Carolina courageously passed the Racial Justice Act in 2009, making it the first state in the country to give death row inmates a chance to have their sentences changed to life without parole based on proof that race played a significant role in determining punishment.
A state court is now hearing the first challenge to a death sentence under that law. Marcus Robinson, who has been on death row since 1994, must prove that state prosecutors discriminated against blacks in selecting juries, affecting the outcomes of cases, including his. His lawyers presented a notable study by researchers at Michigan State University showing this kind of bias.
In 173 cases between 1990 and 2010, the study examined decisions involving 7,421 potential jurors (82 percent were white; 16 percent were black). In 166 cases, where there was at least one black potential juror, prosecutors dismissed more than twice as many blacks from the jury (56 percent) as others (25 percent). With black defendants, like Mr. Robinson, the disparity was even greater. Even accounting for “alternative explanations” besides race for different “strike rates” — for instance, excluding those who expressed ambivalence about the death penalty — the study found blacks were still more than twice as likely to be dismissed.
And:
This bias is not news in North Carolina. Since colonial times into recent decades, racial prejudice has been a huge factor in the imposition of death sentences in the state. The Racial Justice Act, a response to that terrible history, uses statistical studies in regulating the death penalty, as the Supreme Court said legislatures could properly do in a 1987 case. Opponents of the law are battling to repeal it and have scheduled a hearing on it this week. The evidence of gross racial bias presented in Mr. Robinson’s case calls for commuting his sentence — but also for abolishing the death penalty in North Carolina.
Today's News & Observer of Raleigh reports, "Case highlights Racial Justice Act concerns." It written by Craig Jarvis and John Frank.
State Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and the state chapter of Americans for Prosperity wanteveryone to know that a convicted killer in Wayne County was taken off death row last week and could be eligible for parole.
"Exactly why we said RJA is dangerous," Berger's office tweeted Friday afternoon, referring to the Racial Justice Act.
"Killer taken off death row and made parole eligible," tweeted ASP.
Not only was this not a Racial Justice Act claim - Marvin Williams' death sentence was vacated because he is mentally disabled - but parole is not an option for inmates whosucceed in getting off death row under the 2-year-old law, according to the way the law is written.
Republican lawmakers and the state's prosecutors say someone sentenced at a time when parole was still an option in first-degree murder cases, before 1994, could theoretically end up going free.
But while Williams will be eligible for parole consideration - none of the 16 inmates who have already been spared execution because they were deemed mentally disabled have been paroled - the RJA specifies that life without parole is the only option for a successful claim.
"Prosecutors up next in N.C. Racial Justice Act hearing," is Martha Waggoner's AP filing, via the Virginian Pilot.
Prosecutors will begin presenting their case in the first evidentiary hearing involving North Carolina's Racial Justice Act.
Prosecutors are scheduled to begin presenting their case this morning in a Cumberland County courtroom. Marcus Robinson is a black man serving a death sentence for killing a white teenager in 1991.
Robinson is trying to prove that racial bias played a role in jury selection, saying prosecutors illegally excluded blacks as jurors.
The Fayetteville Observer had daily reports on the hearing last week, written by Paul Woolverton. "Emotion absent from first week of Racial Justice Act hearing in Fayetteville," provides a summary. It appeared in yesterday's paper.
At North Carolina's premiere Racial Justice Act hearing in Fayetteville, the mathematical language is clinical, the courtroom emotionally sterile under fluorescent lights.
Two sets of well-dressed lawyers perform with professional decorum and courtesy.
Seated on the front row of the courtroom every day last week, grieving father Richard Tornblom thought the ongoing exercise was a waste of time and money.
"Dog and pony show," he called it, this hearing to determine whether the man who robbed and killed his 17-year-old son Erik more than 20 years ago received the death sentence in a trial infected with racial injustice.
Erik Tornblom was white, defendant Marcus Reymond Robinson is black, and the prosecutor, who was white, was more than three times more prone to dismiss blacks from the jury pool than non-blacks, according to testimony and evidence presented during last week's proceedings.
Additional Fay Observer coverage includes, "Charlotte judge testifies in Racial Justice Act hearing about how he fights courtroom bias," and, "Racial Justice Act hearing: Researcher suggests racial bias in selecting juries."
The ACLU Capital Punishment Project issued a news release, "North Carolinians Struck From Capital Juries Because of Race Speak Out in Favor of Racial Justice Act." It's also available via PR Web. It includes video. Here's the beginning:
North Carolinians who say they were wrongfully struck from juries in capital cases because of their race are speaking out today in a new video produced by the American Civil Liberties Union documenting their experiences.
The video, which features three African-Americans who say they were struck from capital juries by prosecutors simply because of the color of their skin, is being released in conjunction with the first hearing under North Carolina's historic Racial Justice Act. Marcus Robinson is asking that his death sentence be commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Potential African-American jurors in Robinson’s case were struck from his jury at a rate 3.5 times higher than other potential jurors.
“It made me feel like I was back in 1960, that racism is still very much alive,” Laverne Keys, who was excluded in the 1999 case State v. Jathiyah Al-Bayyinah, says in the video. “It makes you wonder whether all these people are being given a fair trial or given a fair consequence so far as the death penalty.”
There is also legislative news on the RJA front from last week. "Racial Justice Act committee gets its marching orders," was posted by the News & Observer.
That committee House Speaker Thom Tillis appointed last month to try to come up with a Racial Justice Act compromise has been given its official marching orders.
The panel of six Republicans and four Democrats can begin meeting as soon as its chairman, Rep. Tim Moore, a Republican from Cleveland County, calls for it. Some legislators had hoped that the committee might come up with proposed legislative by the short session in May.
However, in an order issued last week, Tillis directed that the committee can do that if it's able, but it doesn’t have to wrap up its work until the General Assembly convenes next year.
Earlier coverage of the RJA begins at the link.
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