REMINDER: The Governor has called a special session of the General Assembly for Weds. Jan 4, 2012 at 2pm – to reconsider Senate Bill 9 which the Governor has vetoed. Senate Bill 9 is an act to repeal the Racial Justice Act of 2009
Please stand with me and contact your legislators and urge them to uphold the veto of SB9- The Repeal of the Racial Justice Act– and continue to move North Carolina forward rather than backward.
Fayetteville Observer OpEd: “A Time for Justice and Healing” By Rep. Rep. Rick Glazier of Fayetteville, a Democrat, represents House District 45 in the N.C. General Assembly.
The North Carolina Racial Justice Act is all about the relationship between our present and our history. The early history of our state was marred by the adoption of slavery with a clear institutionalized message – race made a difference – and the legal system formalized the disparate treatment of African Americans and whites through the Black Codes. Those laws provided different punishments for crimes, based on the race of the defendant and the victim.
Other laws, intensely hostile to African-Americans, remained on the books until well into the last century. Their cultural counterparts have never fully been eradicated. It is in this context that the Racial Justice Act was enacted in 2009.
The criminal justice system operates with law enforcement officers, prosecutors, judges and juries exercising discretion over a host of decisions made during the course of a case. Because of this broad discretion, significant opportunities exist for an individual’s prejudice, informed by his cultural lens, conscious or unconscious, to affect the ultimate outcome of a case. At every stage of the process, African American suspects have often been treated differently. This should come as no surprise – it simply reflects the complex social mechanisms of class and race particularly prevalent in North Carolina through much of the last century.
About the act
So how does the act apply? The bill addresses the question of how discrimination is proved. There are generally two ways: first, with direct evidence that establishes that the decision-maker was prejudiced. In North Carolina cases, words by a juror suggesting "blacks value life less than whites" powerfully suggest racial animus. But, today, discrimination is often not that overt. It is more subtle, yet we cannot deny its existence. Any act of discrimination is, in effect, an act of violence – a denial of a citizen’s right to equal dignity and an obstacle to a society intent on assuring equal protection under the law. So a second route of establishing discrimination is through the use of statistical evidence to prove or disprove racial animus drove a decision.
Why statistical evidence? Because each statistic represents a human decision. These are objective facts quantifying very subjective human behavior. The act recognizes this and allows courts to look at those facts. Where there is a true disparate impact suggesting race played a substantial factor in the decision to seek the death penalty, select a jury or impose the death sentence, the act demands a legitimate, non-discriminatory explanation exist for what occurred.
A defendant bears a heavy burden to prove discrimination, but in the rare case that burden is met, a life sentence without parole will be imposed in lieu of a death sentence. No one, least of all the memory of the victim, is served by executing a citizen on the basis of skin color. Defendants may file frivolous cases – and they should be quickly dismissed for what they are – but the fact that many cases may be meritless hardly justifies refusing to consider those that are not. We are better than that as a civilized people.
Statistical evidence is used on a daily basis in courts throughout this country to determine civil law issues of discrimination. If it is acceptable to do so in those settings, it is impossible to see how the same evidence is invalid in a criminal case where a life is at stake.
Memorable case
Years ago, I represented a client in a civil rights case who was falsely convicted of a rape he did not commit. He was black; his accuser white. His jury was all white with black prospective jurors struck from the jury pool as was – often – customary practice in the early 1980s in parts of this state.
His defense was supported by four alibi witnesses (including a base chaplain), but not believed. He proclaimed his innocence loudly, but nobody listened. Strong exculpatory evidence was hidden by police (white) from prosecutors. He stayed in prison for eight years for a crime DNA evidence later proved he did not commit. His case was a classic example of errors permeating cross-racial eyewitness identification. And, my client was hardly alone, with North Carolina releasing nearly a dozen men from prison with life or death sentences for crimes they did not commit.
We are all human and we make mistakes, particularly in cases where extraordinary pressures exist to expeditiously solve the case, circumstances allowing our stereotypes and prejudices to take hold. That being said, we need to create a system as free from error as possible, one with a fail-safe check on those all-too-human inclinations, and one which convicts and punishes the guilty, but also frees the innocent.
The Racial Justice Act, in combination with many other criminal justice reforms – like the Actual Innocence Commission – is part of a modern and accountable criminal-justice system designed not to perpetuate error, but to correct it. Many honorable steps to eradicate the influence of discrimination have been achieved, but as the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan wrote in McClesky v. Kemp, "we can not pretend we have completely escaped the grip of a historical legacy spanning centuries (and written into our constitution at birth). … We remain imprisoned by the past as long as we continue to deny its influence on the present."
The Racial Justice Act will once and for all, if allowed to complete its mission, determine whether race played a substantial role in the outcome of any case where a defendant sits on death row and will, as important, deter such from happening again.
The time delay for these executions until that decision is made and the cost of doing so dim in comparison to the moral, spiritual and human cost of not doing so. We can go a long way toward restoring full confidence in our criminal justice system for us all if we simply allow the law to complete its task.
Nothing in life is settled until settled right.
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More Information on the Racial Justice Act
· The Racial Justice Act is not about the guilt or innocence of defendants on death row. No person will ever be released from prison under the Racial Justice Act. The Racial Justice Act only allows a person on death row to provide evidence that racial bias played a role in their death penalty sentence. The burden of proof is on the defendant. If they are able to do so, they could possibly have their sentence commuted to life in prison without parole. If the claim has no merit, the person’s death sentence will stand.
· The Racial Justice Act is a modest piece of legislation created to defend against any racial bias playing a role in a death sentence. Passed and signed by the Governor in 2009, the Racial Justice Act was championed by supporters and opponents of the death penalty alike, because they all knew that we must examine the practices and procedures that lead to the disparities found in the application of the ultimate punishment in North Carolina.
· The reality of racial bias in death penalty trials is confirmed by a study conducted by Michigan State University. The study found that defendants with White victims are 2.6 times more likely to receive the death penalty than if their victims are African-American. Potential African-American jurors are dismissed from juries at over twice the rate of their White counterparts. Thirty-one defendants on death row were sentenced by all-White juries. And 38 more defendants were sentenced to death by juries with only one person of color.
Rep. Angela R. Bryant
Legislative Office Building, Room 542
300 N. Salisbury Street
Raleigh, NC 27603-5925
919-733-5878 (p)
919-754-3289 (f)
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