RACE: Supporters Re-Affirm Importance of North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act in Face of Prosecutors’ Challenges

Leaders from North Carolina’s civ­il rights groups, such as the NAACP, and from the defense bar have re-affirmed the need for the state’s Racial Justice Act, which was passed in 2009. The Act allows death row inmates to chal­lenge their death sen­tences using data from sta­tis­ti­cal stud­ies of racial bias with­in the state. The North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys is attempt­ing to have the law repealed because they say it threat­ens the entire death penal­ty sys­tem. Tye Hunter from the Center for Death Penalty Litigation said that some of the aca­d­e­m­ic stud­ies being used under the Act show clear pat­terns of racial bias in the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem, includ­ing exclu­sion of qual­i­fied jurors on the basis of race. Moreover, he not­ed, ​“We had­n’t had an exe­cu­tion for three years before the Racial Justice Act was even passed. So the mora­to­ri­um on the death penal­ty, I think, has to do with oth­er issues.” Two Racial Justice Act cas­es are cur­rent­ly under­way in state courts, though one is cur­rent­ly on hold. In the active case, pros­e­cu­tors have repeat­ed­ly sought con­tin­u­ances and have unsuc­cess­ful­ly tried to have the assigned Superior Court judge, Greg Weeks, an African-American, removed from the case. 

(L. Leslie, ​“Round Two for the Racial Justice Act?,” WRAL​.com, November 16, 2011). See Race.