Legislators Work to Undercut NC Racial Justice Act
North Carolina Representatives Justin P. Burr (R-Montgomery), Sarah Stevens (R-Alleghany), Dan Ingle (R-Alamance), and Paul Stam (R-Wake) filed a bill in April to effectively eliminate the NC Racial Justice Act, which passed with bipartisan support in 2009 after years of study that showed racial disparities in sentencing. The bill is currently being reviewed by the House Judiciary Committee; to become law it will have to pass the Senate as well and then be signed by Governor Bev Perdue.
The RJA was designed to address clear evidence that the state’s capital punishment system has been biased against African American defendants and particularly against defendants whose victims were white. Some of that evidence is contained in a 2001 study by two UNC Chapel Hill professors, Dr. Isaac Unah and Professor John C. Boge, who showed in Race and the Death Penalty in North Carolina that the odds of getting a death sentence increase three-and-a-half times if the victim is white rather than a person of color.
Over more than 20 years several instances were proven of African
American men being sentenced to death at least in part because of their
race or that of their victims—and some of them were shown to be
innocent. Just since 2007, when a court suspended executions in North
Carolina in part because of concerns of bias, three death-row inmates
have been exonerated. All three are African Americans, and in each case
at least one of the crime victims was white.
The best known case is that of Glen Edward Chapman, a convicted murderer
who spent 17 years on death row before proving his innocence and being
released in May 2008. The following month another inmate, Levon “Bo”
Jones, was released after 13 years on death row, after prosecutors
dropped all charges.
According to the website of the Death Penalty Information Center
(www.deathpenaltyinfo.org,) Jones was scheduled for a new trial until
the key witness in the case, who had been paid by the governor’s office
for offering “a clue” and was coached by a detective on what to say at
trial, acknowledged that “much of what I testified to was simply not
true.”
The new legislative majority in Raleigh has asserted that the law as
currently written is likely unconstitutional based on the case of
McClesky v. Kemp, in which the Supreme Court ruled that the matter of
racial discrimination in criminal justice should be addressed by each
state legislature. However, no test of its constitutionality supports
the contention; the Forsyth County judge who adjudicates RJA claims has,
in fact, ruled that the law is constitutional.
Current law allows both statistical evidence and sworn testimony by
attorneys, prosecutors, law enforcement officers, jurors, and others as
to the role of racial bias in capital proceedings. The revisions pushed
by Rep. Burr and his colleagues would not only disallow all such
evidence, they would also change the law so that the even demonstrated
bias applied in death penalty cases would have to be ignored unless a
defendant could prove deliberate discriminatory intent by the state or
jury.
Key differences in the law as written and as proposed can be seen in the following excerpts. The current RJA language states:
A finding that race was the basis of the decision to seek or impose a
death sentence may be established if the court finds that race was a
significant factor in decisions to seek or impose the sentence of death
in the county, the prosecutorial district, the judicial division, or the
State at the time the death sentence was sought or imposed.
Proposed new language reads:
A finding that race was the basis of the decision to seek or impose a
death sentence may be established if the court finds that the State
acted with discriminatory purpose in seeking the death penalty or in
selecting the jury that sentenced the defendant, or one or more of the
jurors acted with discriminatory purpose in the guilt-innocence or
sentencing phases of the defendant’s trial.
Similarly, while the current law was deliberately written to allow both
statistical evidence and the sworn testimony of those who have “insider
information,” the replacement text would put the entire burden of proof
on the defendant. The law currently says:
b) Evidence relevant to establish a finding that race was a significant
factor in decisions to seek or impose the sentence of death in the
county, the prosecutorial district, the judicial division, or the State
at the time the death sentence was sought or imposed may include
statistical evidence or other evidence, including, but not limited to,
sworn testimony of attorneys, prosecutors, law enforcement officers,
jurors, or other members of the criminal justice system or both, that,
irrespective of statutory factors, one or more of the following applies:
(1) Death sentences were sought or imposed significantly more frequently
upon persons of one race than upon persons of another race.
(2) Death sentences were sought or imposed significantly more frequently
as punishment for capital offenses against persons of one race than as
punishment of capital offenses against persons of another race.
(3) Race was a significant factor in decisions to exercise peremptory challenges during jury selection.
The legislative replacement language is as follows:
The defendant has the burden of proving that there was discriminatory
purpose in decisions to seek or impose the sentence of death in the
defendant’s case.
The effect of changing the law to reflect the desire of the new
legislative majority in Raleigh would be to gut the law, in effect
repealing it altogether. For those from both parties who worked hard for
many years to study the need for the Racial Justice Act and who voted
on a bipartisan basis to pass it just two years ago, its loss will set
North Carolina’s quest for a more effective, unbiased justice system
back by many years.
| In addition to Glen Edward Chapman and Levon Jones, a number of other African American men have been convicted in North Carolina on questionable evidence and/or by juries that have later been shown to have acted with deliberate racial bias. The Death Penalty Information Center includes examples from many states; those below are cases just from North Carolina.
The all-white jury that sentenced Kenneth Rouse to death in Randolph County included an avowed racist who stated in a sworn affidavit that he believed that “blacks do not care about living as much as whites do” and was quoted as believing that “black men rape white women so they can brag to their friends.” The same juror acknowledged that he had lied about his beliefs in order to sit on the jury. Robert Bacon was sentenced to death in Onslow County by an all-white jury in 1991. Before his execution date, a former juror revealed that the jury had made derogatory racial comments, including regular use of the “N” word, during deliberations and, according to the ACLU of North Carolina, “sentenced him to death in large part because of their racist views.” In 2001, Bacon was granted clemency days before his scheduled execution. Raymond Rowsey was convicted and sentenced in Alamance County by a jury with only one African American. She stated in an affidavit that the other jurors intimidated and humiliated her, and that when she tried to tell the judge she did not want to impose the death penalty, the judge intimidated her as well so that her position was “unclear.” (The jury must be unanimous to impose the death penalty.) Rowsey was executed in 2004. Jonathon Hoffman, a black man charged with killing a white man, was tried and convicted in 1995 by an all-white jury despite the fact that no physical evidence connected him to the murder of Danny Cook. He began aiming for a new trial in 2004, when allegations of prosecutorial misconduct first arose. Charges were finally dismissed in 2007 when the new District Attorney, John Snyder, dropped the case due to “insufficient admissible evidence.” Jonathon Hoffman spent 12 years on death row. |
To register one’s opinion about keeping the Racial Justice Act intact, residents can call or email their legislators. The area code for all calls is 919. Buncombe County’s Representatives are, Susan Fisher (D) at 715-2013, Patsy Keever (D) at 733-5746, and Tim Moffitt (R) at 715-3012; the county’s Senators are Tom Apodaca (R) at 733-5745 and Martin Nesbitt (D) at 715-3001. To reach any legislator by email, use [email protected]. Thus Tim Moffitt would be [email protected], Tom Apodaca is [email protected].
