The North Carolina Racial Justice Act was signed into law Aug. 11, making the state only the second-after Kentucky in 1998-to allow inmates to challenge their death penalty sentences on the grounds that racial bias was a factor in their sentencing.
The primary sponsor of the legislation in the N.C. Senate was Democratic state Sen. Floyd McKissick of Durham.
According to the bill, prisoners who can prove that race was a significant factor in the decision to impose the death penalty in the state, county, prosecutorial district or the judicial division may have their sentences commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The legislation allows defendants and their attorneys to present statistical evidence as well as the sworn testimony of attorneys, jurors, law enforcement officers, prosecutors or other members of the criminal justice system to support their claims of racial bias.
While the Racial Justice Act is not ultimately aimed at ending the death penalty in North Carolina, supporters of the bill believe that the legislation will play an essential part in ridding the criminal justice system of racism.
"I have always been a supporter of the death penalty, but I have always believed it must be carried out fairly," N.C. Gov. Bev Perdue, a Democrat, said in a news release. "The Racial Justice Act ensures that when North Carolina hands down our state's harshest punishment to our most heinous criminals-the decision is based on the facts and the law, not racial prejudice."
Detractors of the legislation believe that this bill is another attempt to eliminate the death penalty altogether in the state, which has had a de facto moratorium since August 2006.
Republican state Sen. Phil Berger of Eden, the Senate's minority leader, said in a news release the legislation was not geared toward correcting any racial disparities, but rather ending the death penalty. Berger added an amendment to the bill that would have ended the state's moratorium on the death penalty, but the provision was ultimately stripped from the final version that became law.
"Make no mistake this law has little to do with justice and nothing to do with guilt or innocence," Berger said. "For the first time in North Carolina, the statistical composition of the inmates on death row will outweigh the facts of a particular case in the determination of punishment. Families of the victims of the most heinous crimes will now be subjected to the further delay of true justice for them and their murdered loved ones."
The Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said this particular legislation has nothing to do with ending the death penalty.
"Even if you believe in the death penalty, you should not want a justice system that operates with racism," Barber said. "The fact of the matter is, you could still be guilty of this crime and under the North Carolina Racial Justice Act, you would have your death sentence commuted to life in prison without the possibility of parole. but you should not have a death penalty that is implemented by race."
Barber went on to say, however, that the NAACP opposes the death penalty and ultimately seeks to have it eliminated in the United States. He said the opposition was largely based on the number of innocent men who have been nearly executed because of their race.
"Surely, we want to see North Carolina and the other Southern states eliminate the death penalty," Barber said, noting that since the reinstatement of the death penalty in the 1976, several death sentences have been commuted due to wrongful convictions. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 135 convictions have been overturned since 1973. "That's lives, mistakes we would have made if this thing had been carried to fruition."
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