NC Governor vetoes Death-Row Racial Bias Bill

I’m not real fond of Bev Perdue even though she’s a Democrat. She often acts like a Republican with her strong budget cuts digging into social services programs.

I was particularly annoyed when she proposed cutting teaching jobs, putting more work on the remaining teachers and reducing their salaries. Her response to their complaints was, “Well, they’ll just have to suck it up!”

I think ole Bev rode in on Obama’s coattails by people too lazy to split their ticket and she has the most grating, whiny voice on earth – or perhaps it’s just me. So, when I first read this headline I was apoplectic with rage – until I read the whole article.

The headline is misleading whether by poor grammar or journalistic design, I don’t know, but what the Governor has actually done is veto a REPEAL of the NC 2009 Racial Justice Act which enables judges to weigh all statistics related to racial bias when considering the merits of a defendant’s complaint that their death penalty sentence was racially biased.

Some of the disturbing facts that led to this 2009 law:

Michigan State University law school researchers findings show that defendants who killed a white person in North Carolina were two-and-a-half times more likely to be sentenced to death than those whose victims were black. The findings also show that juries were disproportionately white.

Defense attorneys who fought for the law say the statistics tell an alarming story: In North Carolina, African American jury pool members who were not rejected for cause — such as opposition to the death penalty — were rejected by prosecutors at about two times the rate as similarly situated whites. The disparity was even greater in Cumberland and Wake counties. In Wake County, qualified potential African American jurors were rejected at 2.5 times the rate of all other jurors; their Cumberland County counterparts were rejected at 2.6 times the rate, according to the Michigan State research.

Prosecutors who pushed the repeal said the act would clog up the court system with new appeals, creating a permanent moratorium on capital punishment. Gee, we wouldn’t want something as trivial as judicial oversight in cases that involve life or death to cut into their tee off time!

Some related articles are HERE and HERE.

I could rehash all the arguments against such a repeal but the readers here at the Swash Zone are perceptive and intelligent enough and do not need me to point out the obvious and glaring injustice of repeal.

I think I will leave Senate Minority Leader Martin Nesbitt, an Asheville, N.C with the last eloquent word:

"I will not stand by as a member of the Bar and a minority leader and not allow this issue to be taken up by the court system," Nesbitt said. "I really hope all these cases are dismissed, and we find that racial bias did not occur. ... Nobody's trying to let any of these folks out of prison. We want to know, so we can sleep at night, that no one was put to death in North Carolina because of racial bias."

This will be going back to the state legslature after the new year to consider an override to her veto. Time to flood the phones and email boxes of NC state legislators.