Duke University School of Law Professor James E. Coleman Jr.writes, "Dishonest decree," for Raleigh's News & Observer.
When the General Assembly initially tried honestly to repeal the Racial Justice Act, the governor vetoed the bill, and the legislature did not have the votes to override her veto. So the Gang of Republicans who controls the General Assembly, with the help of five Democrats who were not honest enough to admit they wanted to repeal the RJA, passed a bill that they claimed was a compromise. Their override of the governor’s veto of that fig leaf effectively repeals the Racial Justice Act.
Like the bill the General Assembly also passed to bar the use of scientific climate change data, repeal of the Racial Justice Act is governing by dishonest decree: If you don’t like the real facts, replace them with your own. But nothing the General Assembly can do will hold back the rising water levels on the coast and repealing the Racial Justice Act will not eliminate the racial discrimination that it uncovered.
Perhaps the Republicans next will pass the Civil Rights Act of the 21st Century, making all of us Honorary Whites and forever closing the book on racial discrimination in North Carolina.
"North Carolina Courts Continue to Struggle with Racial Bias in Jury Selection," is the title of Matthew Lynch's post at Huffington Post. He's Chair of Education at Langston University.
In 1986, the Supreme Court held that prosecutors could not purposefully exclude African-Americans from trial juries "on account of race, or on the false assumption that members of his race as a group are not qualified to serve as jurors." While all states permit attorneys to make "peremptory" challenges--dismissing a potential juror without stating a reason--the Court said the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause precluded prosecutors from using that power "to challenge potential jurors solely on account of their race or on the assumption that black jurors as a group will be unable impartially to consider the State's case against a black defendant."
More than 25 years later, some states continue to struggle with the Supreme Court's mandate. In April, North Carolina Superior Court Judge Gregory A. Weeks commuted the death sentence of Marcus Robinson, an African-American convicted of a 1991 murder. Weeks acted under the Racial Justice Act, a law passed by the North Carolina General Assembly in 2009 that stated, "No person shall be subject to or given a sentence of death or shall be executed pursuant to any judgment that was sought or obtained on the basis of race." Among other provisions, death row inmates could present evidence that race "was a significant factor in decisions to exercise peremptory challenges during jury selection."
Robinson's attorneys presented a meticulous study by Michigan State University professors Barbara O'Brien and Linda Grosso, who reviewed the jury selection process in 173 North Carolina capital cases. They found that prosecutors were twice as likely to exclude African-American jurors with peremptory challenges than white jurors. Even adjusting for other factors, O'Brien and Grosso concluded, and Judge Weeks agreed, "prosecutors have intentionally discriminated against black [jurors] during jury selection by prosecutors when seeking to impose death sentences in capital cases." This included defendants tried in the same county and time period as Robinson.
And:
Ultimately, the solution to North Carolina's problem may be found in the words of the great civil rights Justice Thurgood Marshall, who wrote separately in the 1986 Supreme Court case. While supporting the Court's decision, he lamented his colleagues didn't go far enough in remedying the problem of race-based peremptory challenges. "Merely allowing defendants the opportunity to challenge the racially discriminatory use of peremptory challenges in individual cases will not end the illegitimate use of the peremptory challenge," Marshall wrote. Instead, he felt it was time for the Court to eliminate such challenges altogether.
The Greenville Daily Reflector carries the OpEd, "Debating the death penalty," by John Hood of the John Locke Foundation.
For the activists who have fought for years to abolish North Carolina’s death penalty, the just-completed short session was a crushing disappointment. Their chief accomplishment, the Racial Justice Act of 2009, was substantially rewritten. Both chambers then voted to override Gov. Beverly Perdue’s veto
The Racial Justice Act was just the latest in a series of initiatives used by death-penalty foes to maintain a de facto moratorium on executions in North Carolina, as nearly every death row inmate had filed RJA claims to convert their sentences to life in prison. The newly rewritten RJA is no longer so easy to abuse. Rather than use old or irrelevant data to assert racial bias in sentencing, murderers on death row now have to cite recent statistics from the counties or prosecutorial districts where their sentences were imposed as well as other evidence directly related to the handling of their cases.
And:
The debate about capital punishment isn’t over. Perhaps its foes will convince the rest of us that it is morally wrong to execute criminals, or that as a practical matter its costs exceed its benefits. But the kinds of arguments they’ve been making lately are entirely unpersuasive.
"3 convicted murderers seek to use 2009 version of North Carolina's Racial Justice Act," is the news report in the Fayetteville Observer. It's written by Paul Woolverton. Here's the beginning:
State lawmakers this month revised the N.C. Racial Justice Act to make it harder for condemned prisoners to get off death row.
But three convicted murderers who will try to win claims in Cumberland County this fall want to base their arguments on the original 2009 version of the law. More than 150 other death-row inmates may try to do the same.
The passage of the new Racial Justice Act has further complicated the legal questions over what had been the second such law in the nation to give condemned prisoners an opportunity to argue that racism contributed to their sentences.
Should judges use the 2009 law or the 2012 revisions when considering claims filed before this summer? Resolving this question could end up extending the state's unofficial moratorium on executions instead of ending it as legislative leaders had hoped.
The three defendants in the Cumberland County cases, convicted of notorious murders, argue in court papers that the 2009 law shouldn't be taken away from them.
Prosecutors Rob Thompson of Fayetteville and Mike Silver of Winston-Salem, who are trying to keep the trio on death row, are expected to fight to solely use the 2012 law. They don't publicly discuss the cases outside of court.
The decision likely will pivot on whether the 2009 law gave the defendants a substantive, constitutionally protected right that they would lose if they can't use it anymore, said retired Forsyth County District Attorney Tom Keith.
Keith's staff worked on several pending Racial Justice Act claims while he was in office, and he has authored a paper analyzing the Racial Justice Act to be published in the North Carolina State Bar Journal.
Keith thinks the revised law should apply, but he doesn't expect the issue to be resolved until it is heard by the state Supreme Court.
Earlier coverage of North Carolina's Racial Justice Act begins at the link. Related posts are in the race index.
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