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Re: Perdue signs Racial Justice Act

PATRICIA8 — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:27:20 -0400

P= pretty
E=educated
R=ready
D=democrat
U=UNDER INFLUENCE OF
E=NEXT ELECTIONS

Re: Perdue signs Racial Justice Act

PATRICIA8 — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:22:24 -0400

O=OFFERING
B=black americans
A=and
M=majorities
A=assitants for more authority

Re: Perdue signs Racial Justice Act

PATRICIA8 — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 00:11:15 -0400

Once again the laws being passed do nothing for the victims bc the state is scared to put their money where they might not reap the benefits. They can prosecute off of our tax money with state attorneys,turn around, let them out and let our tax money pay for minimum wage probation officers to allow them to go through the whole process again with our tax money. Then we have them on death row with multiple felonies and they want to blame race. If there is any question of race problems on death row when most there have rap sheets a mile long before they get there, why don't the NAACP set them up an appointment with the President to work it out over a beer!!! I am sure our Governor would be honored to go to the White House or even have the PRESIDENT COME TO OUR FINE PRISONS. Obama and Purdue could set down in the prisons and discuss this with all of them. I am sure there are many prisoners that would love a beer and maybe could share a lot of racial stories with them. Then once we get that all squared away we could elect some repubicans to listen to the victims about how they have been discriminated against. The victims would settle for sharing a dollar pepsi or coke while discussing the issues, I'm sure. That would be a lot of savings right there bc there would be many victims in comparison to race victims or would it, considering a lot of the victims are families of drive by shootings and gang related crimes. Oh, what am I thinking the crimnals with these offensense are not on death row they are on probation. Oh well they may still enjoy a beer with Obama and Perdue to discuss why they are where they are.

Re: Perdue signs Racial Justice Act

redriver — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 04:18:10 -0400

This race thing is getting very old. I wish we could call it something else, thereby creating a whole new occupation for many. All politicians in trouble always reach down and drag it up, dust it off, and claim it as their cause. It is the one item in the bag that our leaders surely hope never goes away since they are certain to gain points just by using the word. They keep the race relations a subject just like scholars and preachers do by keeping it in the bag. She is trying hard yet she knows, next year is an election year for her team, and with their record this year, they have to start playing all the cards they have.

Re: Perdue signs Racial Justice Act

Cicero02 — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 01:18:02 -0400

Balance of justice, unbalanced with this law.

Statistics can only be used to void application of a death penalty. They cannot be used to justify the application of it.

Perdue signs Racial Justice Act; Closet racists freak OUT

GiggleBox — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 23:41:58 -0400

Keep 'em coming. This is entertaining.

Re: Perdue signs Racial Justice Act

Flowerpower — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:37:49 -0400

This is based upon another fallacy. People who are ill-read and ill-educated often think in fallacies, to wit: There are more blacks in prison than whites; therefore, jailing procedures are unfair. Circular cause and consequence.
The fact is imprisonment is NOT based upon race, or any other demographic: IT IS BASED UPON THE COMMISSION OF CRIMES. More blacks commit crimes; THEREFORE, more blacks go to prison. Their race has NOTHING to do with incarceration. EVER.

Re: Perdue signs Racial Justice Act

Flowerpower — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:25:47 -0400

What a pile of crap. If a black person kills somebody, his victim is dead whether race figures in to the case or not.

Re: Perdue signs Racial Justice Act

AgentPierce — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 22:10:26 -0400

...the NAACP may be supporting Purdue next election.... ???

NO WAY .... can't believe that! ..... When's the last time a black organization dared to support a Democrat. After all that the Dems have done for them with that Great Society Thingy back in 1965.

How's that working out by the way. Another 6-8 decades it oughta kick in, don't cha think ???

Re: Perdue signs Racial Justice Act

GiggleBox — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 21:14:08 -0400

Patricia8 has a point.

I do hate prejudices but the Democrats like her are causing them!

Re: Perdue signs Racial Justice Act

PATRICIA8 — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 20:23:08 -0400

The only sense I can make of such a stupid law is that the NAACP may be supporting Purdue next election. I don't think that will work though bc I believe her supporters are even sick of her. These Democrats pretend to be so non-racial but they are the most racial to the whites, only thinking of themselves for more votes. When will the minority realize they are using them for self gratification and votes. They don't care about whites or blacks, just #1. The Democrats are keeping racism alive in our country for selfworth when all races are willing to put it behind them and move on to a better America. It's the person we are dealing with that should be judged not the color and we all have enough common sense to know that. Once again I say this law she had passed is just for the benefit of a few in office. If I or my family has been offended by someone I could care less what color they are I would want them to pay in the same manner. I don't think there is any other American that doesn't feel the same. It is time they all stop this race nonsense and act with commonsense when they get elected to office. Every person on death row is going to be arguing race is why they are there now and it's going to be more money for state appointed lawyers. Sad news is the white person arguing has no arguement in her law, now how is this fair? I do hate prejudices but the Democrats like her are causing them! We are all God's children separated by good and evil and until we start acting that way and believing that way our lives will be controlled by politicians and their selfish ideas to gain power.

Re: Perdue signs Racial Justice Act

GiggleBox — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:21:12 -0400

Those white guys raymond1 and ProwlingWoofie have a point.

Wake up, people, before the Democrats take everything you own...

If we can't murder innocent people just because they're black, what's the point in being white?

Re: Perdue signs Racial Justice Act

jayhurst — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:12:01 -0400

(Continued from below)
I do not ignore the pain that family members will experience with additional court actions. As we learned in law school, though, hard cases make bad law. While I sympathize with the additional pain, that pain is no reason to ignore a right to question whether Due Process and Equal Protection was applied in these most extreme cases with absolute consequences.

Finally, to the future costs of unrequited crime. As you know, there is no such thing as a prospective statistic. I do not believe a single major felony will go unprosecuted as a result of this Act, however. I am confident Justice Department managers will allocate resources to find and prosecute the worst of the worst, as it has always been.

Now, how many petty crimes might go unprosecuted? That is a fair question, but I must respectfully suggest you’ve overstated the risks of unprosecuted crimes and of time-costs these hearings will hang on law enforcement. Police and prosecutors involved in these matters as witnesses will lose a few hours, or even a couple of days, to prep and testimony, yes, but they will not be engaged in this process for full-time weeks on end. They will prepare then go back to work, then they will testify and go back to work. The interruption to work will more likely be de minimis, and coverable by others in the office (much as public defenders must operate in these budget-cutting days). Certainly if good cause exists, like harm to an investigation if a hearing goes on X date, we both know that State court continuances (maybe even ex parte) are not hard to get.

Moreover, as we both know, an efficient office with three to four experienced lawyers – both State and defense – and double that many paralegals and investigators could quickly have general responses to these 163 claims. Inmate claims will surely rely on many of the same legal and statistical citations, because there is only so much data out there, and in short order the death-heavy jurisdictions will have their own statistics in a neatly-bound report. This then leaves a lot of cut-and-paste briefing available to attorneys at both tables.

I will bet cash that, by the tenth hearing, State replies and sur-replies will have effective templates, and the major time-cost will be the fact investigation. By the twentieth hearing process, I suspect there will be reported court decisions that further limit defendants’ claims – including, perhaps, prima facie showings to survive dismissal as the hearing begins (as you note, who knows how some of the statute’s language will be interpreted). Should we get to a hundredth hearing, it will be as pro forma as any ineffective assistance of counsel collateral challenge today. I wonder whether there will be a hundred challenges of 163, though, and I will again bet cash that we will not see all 163 death rowers make the challenge. We will know one year from the statute’s effective date, though, and then the up-front cost will be all but over.

I will close with a general comment. Those posters who focus on this Act being a boon for blacks and a bane to white killers, you may be illustrating the very inherent bias that makes this Act necessary. It applies to ALL races, including Caucasian death rowers. This Act is not politically correct. It is constitutionally correct.

Re: Perdue signs Racial Justice Act

jayhurst — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:10:06 -0400

I first clarify, NCProsecutor, that I was actually asking whether you had NC prosecution costs on-hand, since I’d have to find them. While you might at times read my posts and say “what an a**,” there won’t be any passive to that aggressive. When it seems like a snide comment, odds are I just poorly phrased something.

Now, the financial burdens are EXACTLY one point I made, in counter-point to your comment, that death prosecutions are expensive acts of vengeance that could be more cost-effectively addressed as Life Without Parole prosecutions. It was much less a rhetorical device (though thanks for the prop) than one of my several substantive arguments against State-sponsored executions. The costs of our entire criminal justice philosophy is on the edge of bankrupting us as a nation – meant fiscally, forget the human costs for the moment – and we as a people MUST decide whether vengeance is really worth the enormous financial burden that follows a death versus life-without prosecution.

We must also decide whether we have over-criminalized daily life since the 1980s, meaning there are just more crimes on the books than there really needs to be. I have grave doubts that we are a more criminal people than the Russians or Chinese, and yet we have more persons per capita under sentence than either of those nations. Certainly we need to re-consider whether every crime requires prosecution to imprisonment, or whether a good deal of our petty offenses (for example, drugs possession to some street-level trafficking) might be better handled as NC is stepping toward – expanded drug courts and treatment options, with prison prosecution as a LAST resort, not a mandatory minimum.

When I spoke of “up-front” costs, I didn’t mean the pre-trial hearing that will become part and parcel of future death defenses. Like you, I was speaking about the current death row inmates who are eligible for this retroactive challenge. Yes, these up-front 163 causes of action will be a burden. That justice is expensive, however, is no reason to cut corners on constitutional protections (including the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, due process and equal protection guarantees notwithstanding race). As a plurality Supreme Court held in 1957:

“The concept that the Bill of Rights and other constitutional protections against arbitrary government are inoperative when they become inconvenient or when expediency dictates otherwise is a very dangerous doctrine and if allowed to flourish would destroy the benefit of a written Constitution and undermine the basis of our government.”

Reid v. Covert, 354 U.S. 1, 14 (1957).

Re: Perdue signs Racial Justice Act

nancync — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:51:01 -0400

Ok, so by writing, rubber stamping this law, is this part of the reparations nonsense? Really? Come on, how much guilt is too much guilt.