Racial Justice Act Cases Filed
Time to Look at the Evidence
Everyone agrees that race should play no role in the imposition of the death penalty. North Carolina has taken important steps to make sure that if there is evidence that race is a factor, The Racial Justice Act was signed into law in August, 2009 and it allows defendants facing the death penalty the opportunity to present evidence of racial bias, including statistical evidence, in court. Most importantly, North Carolina now has a law in place that takes racial bias seriously when it is proven.
Five defendants filed motions on August 3, 2010 with evidence to prove that race did - in fact - play a key role in their trials. More filings are sure to follow. The courts will now begin the process of reviewing these motions. If they find that racial bias did play a role, their sentences could be commuted to life without the possibility of parole. If an individual cannot prove that racial bias was a factor in their sentence, they will remain on death row. No one will be released from prison; the only options are death or life without the possibility of parole.
Two new comprehensive studies have reviewed multiple factors and found that race has played a role in capital sentencing in the following ways:
*Of 159 people currently on death row, 31 had all-white juries and 38 of them had only one person of color on their jury.
*Black jurors have been eliminated from jury service at twice the rate of white jurors. Jurors are performing a public duty that is valuable to us all. Juries that are representative of our communities ensure that every person is entitled to a jury of their peers.
*The death penalty is 2.6 times more likely to be imposed when there is at least one white victim. This disturbing fact indicates that the system utilizes most of its resources on cases in which there has been a white victim. In other words, the system's response is uneven depending on the race of the victim.
These findings are hard evidence that racial bias can creep into the sentencing process even when public officials may have the best of intentions. The value placed on jury service or on a murder victim's life are reflections of our communities. That's why it's so important to take a careful look at what is actually happening so that we can make the system will be the way North Carolinians want it to be - free of racial bias.
Click on the links below to read some of the recent articles about motions being filed with evidence of racial bias.
