NC NAACP Statement on Efforts by District Attorneys to Repeal the Racial Justice Act

RACIAL JUSTICE ACT UNDER ATTACK

News Conference to be held Thursday, November 17 at 1:00 pm 

Legislative Press Room  at the NC General Assembly 

16 W Jones Street, Raleigh, NC 27601

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

November 16, 2011

For More Information:     Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, II, President, 919-394-8137

Amina Turner, Executive Director, 919-682-4700

Jennifer Marsh, Legal Redress Coordinator, 919-682-4700

It is time North Carolina’s elected District Attorneys spend their time and resources upholding the law instead of waging a campaign to destroy it.

DURHAM – When the N.C. Racial Justice Act (RJA) became law in 2009, the North Carolina NAACP, which has urged abolishing the racist death penalty for over a century, stood with proponents of the death penalty to pass the RJA.  This coalition helped pass a law that has been hailed nationally as a major breakthrough in exposing the racism that pervades southern courthouses.

Before the ink was dry on the Governor’s signature on the law, ultra-conservative Tea Party forces began a campaign of mendacious race-baiting against the legislators who supported the law, and against the law itself. Now, the extreme right wing forces who pander to base white prejudice are joined by North Carolina’s elected district attorneys.

Why would elected District Attorneys, who have an ethical duty to be "ministers of justice," rather than "convicters at any cost", want to deny the courts another tool to ensure no person is sentenced to death with even a shadow of a doubt that race was used during the trial? 

"The extreme right wing leaders in the NC General Assembly parroted the same lies to attack the Racial Justice Act during the main legislative session," says Rev. Dr. William J Barber. "When they were unsuccessful, they are now trying to sneak through the back door, with a "Repeal the RJA" bill that has never been seen or debated by the Senate. Representatives in the House and the Governor must be ready to stop these extremists, who see nothing wrong to pandering to base racial prejudices to accomplish their narrow agenda of helping the richest 1%, and trying to fool the rest of us. 

The Racial Justice Act is the law in North Carolina. If the District Attorneys in our state want to open the path for North Carolina to go back to the Acts of Racial Injustice, they should say so.  The rest of us will continue to work for Racial Justice. We will not go backwards. We urge all legislators of good will and Governor Bev Perdue to take NOT ONE STEP BACK on the Racial Justice Act and preserve it in its entirety."

The Declaration of Rights in the North Carolina Constitution guarantees all persons equal protection under the law.  While the District Attorneys enter into the political battlefield against the Racial Justice Act, they would do well to examine the evidence of systematic corruption, perjury and incompetence in the criminal justice system, such as:

1) The 2010 Swecker Report revealed systemic perjury within the State Bureau of Investigation crime labs. It found the SBI, which works for the DA’s across the state in difficult cases, had a policy of perjury. SBI agents routinely misrepresented SBI lab results when examined by the DA’s in case after case.  Even if the DA’s did not know at the time their star witnesses were lying to the juries (which we find hard to believe), how can the DA’s now, since this policy of perjury has been widely publicized, be against a law that gives death row inmates a chance to have their sentences changed to life if there were evidence of racial bias in the perjury?  When the Swecker report was first released, the DA’s said they looked at the 268 cases where intentional perjury by SBI witnesses helped gain convictions, and found that in every case, the DA’s still believed there to be no question of  the guilt in those cases.  The DA’s also found 75 more cases, where SBI perjury was a part of the State’s case.  Still, the DA’s insist everyone they convicted was guilty, and that there is no need to check for racial discrimination post-conviction.

2) Seven North Carolina men, locked up for decades on death row have been found not guilty and released in the past few years. Five African Americans; a Latino; and an European-American. These are men who are alive today only because the system did not work fast enough. Why would District Attorneys, who are bound to be ministers of justice and guarantee a fair trial for all, not insist that the taint of racial prejudice and discrimination should not enter the court room?  Do they want to return to the day when there were two standards of justice?  One for white defendants, and one for defendants of color?  

3) Recently, Cumberland County’s DA tried to get the Court to recuse African American Judge Gregory Weeks from hearing the first Racial Justice Act case.  The DA claimed he may need to call Judge Weeks as a witness to testify that prosecutors do not use racially-motivated tactics when they seek a death penalty conviction. The motion was denied, but it serves as further evidence that the DA’s have not accepted the fact that the State (and the NAACP) are serious bout removing racism from all 100 Court Houses in the State, and that the RJA is a vital tool in this effort.

4) During the 2010 campaigns, right-wing extremists, with their unlimited advertising budgets from ultra-rich conservatives, designed and distributed racist ads and mailers to inflame voters’ racial fears and prejudices.  See attached.*  The NAACP protested, and every North Carolina major newspaper condemned the racist and dishonest ads.  One editor called it: "The Big Lie."  Despite the universal condemnation, the right wing extremists, refused to retract their lies.

5) A recent study by Michigan State University found that potential African-American jurors who believe in the death penalty (the majority of African-Americans do not) are more than twice as likely to be dismissed from the jury than their white counterparts.   A defendant’s right, whether Black, Latino, or White, to an impartial jury of his or her peers requires a cross-section of our communities.  By denying African-Americans and other minorities the right to sit on juries, the prosecution and judges deny Black, White, and Latino defendants their right to a fair trial.  Nearly half of the men and women on Death Row now were convicted by juries with one person of color or less.  All-white juries convicted 33 of the people on death row. The Racial Justice Act has revealed what the Racial Justice movement has argued for hundreds of years: Racism hurts white people too.  

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