A House subcommittee on Wednesday morning approved a bill that would attempt to rewrite the Racial Justice Act again. The bill, which would narrow the use of statistics, was criticized by Democrats on the committee and by death penalty opponents as a way around the veto of last year’s attempt to repeal the act. The House could not muster the votes for an override.
Wednesday’s vote was split 8-6 along party lines. Opponents acknowledged that the bill was probably headed toward passage this month, which would set the stage for another veto.
The bill says that statistical evidence of bias alone is not enough to prove that race was a significant factor in a defendant’s case. While the two-year-old Racial Justice Act says convicted killers can use statewide statistics to prove bias, this bill restricts statistics to the county or prosecutorial district where the death sentence was imposed.
It also limits the time frame for proving bias to two years before the crime was committed to two years after sentencing.
The legislation would also require that a death-row inmate who successfully files a claim under the Racial Justice Act waives his or her right to object to receiving a sentence of life without parole. Some have contended that convicted murderers whose death sentences are thrown out under the act could eventually be freed because they were sentenced before there was life without parole in this state. This would make that impossible.
Under a clarifying amendment, the bill makes it clear that someone can file a claim under the Racial Justice Act and also appeal the case on the grounds that they are innocent. Opponents were concerned the bill would force defendants to give up that right.
“This simply will gut the Racial Justice Act,” said Rep. Earline Parmon, a Democrat from Winston-Salem. “… North Carolina continues to go backwards.”
House Majority Leader Paul “Skip” Stam, a Republican from Apex who helped write the bill, said it would make the law about each case individually rather than about statistical evidence of widespread racial bias on the part of prosecutors.
“The spectacle of virtually every person on death row, who was sentenced to death as a cold-blooded killer” filing claims under the RJA would end, Stam said.
Comments
Retreat from Justice
June 7, 2012 - 9:31am — thelaw1Well, great. Keep it up, GOP and the Old North State can gain the reputation of Mississippi for justice. We recently voted to enshrine bigotry in our Constitution. Now this "reform" of the Racial Justice Act will most likely pass the Assembly. Understand that it will be virtually impossible to find statistics derived from only one county or prosecutorial district so any appeal using this act, if "reformed", would be impossible.
Can't we just accept that racial prejudice remains a part of our character and have laws to protect ourselves from acting in conformity with such prejudice?
I know that it is difficult for some politicians and many citizens to understand that just as they may hate abortion and hate gays, some of us hate the State killing people and at the very least want to ensure that justice has been done before the execution. Many of these folks, including many prosecutors and police officers, will not accept the exoneration of a convicted killer even when DNA and objective evidence proves the person not guilty. Of course, if our State would try, convict and imprison prosecutors and police who hide evidence and falsify testimony to obtain wrongful convictions, that just might clean up that problem.
Sometimes it appears that all that has changed since the days when Southern politicians and citizens fought openly for segregation and white supremacy, "evolving" from direct "proof" that African Americans were not as bright, not educatable beyond servitude and that slavery and segregation were ordained by God (go read your Bible ye who disbelieve, etc) is that it is no longer socially acceptable except privately amongst friends, to say such things and use the good "old non-PC, liberal, pinko" terms.