Racial Justice Should Be Color-blind
Staff reports
The Urban News Endorses the Racial Justice Act
Kenneth Rouse was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white North Carolina jury which included a confessed racist who admitted that he lied to get on the jury and that his bigotry influenced his verdict. Kenneth Rouse remains on death row to this day.
Representing himself, Guy LeGrande was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white North Carolina jury in a trial prosecuted by a white man known to wear a gold noose lapel pin and to give out such pins to other prosecutors in his office. LeGrande, who is black, received the death penalty while his mastermind co-conspirator, who was white, received a life sentence for the same crime.
Some prosecutors have routinely excluded people of color from
sitting on juries. As a result, many African-Americans on North
Carolina’s death row were convicted and sentenced to death by all-white
juries.
Over half of North Carolina’s death row inmates are
African-American. A black person charged with killing a white person
has 3.5 times greater odds of receiving the death penalty than when the
victim is African-American.
The Urban News believes it is long past time to address the
racial bias in our courts. A bill called the North Carolina Racial
Justice Act (House Bill 472, Senate Bill 461) is again working its way
through the North Carolina General Assembly. This bill seeks to end
racial disparities in North Carolina’s capital punishment system.
Under current law, a death row inmate is not allowed to present
statistical evidence to help prove that racial discrimination took
place in his case. Under the Racial Justice Act, statistical evidence
of racial discrimination could be used in court to help prove that race
played a part in a prosecutor’s decision to seek the death penalty in
the first place.
Statistical evidence is already allowed in
housing and employment discrimination cases; certainly it should be
allowed when someone’s very life is on trial.
If a death row inmate succeeded in establishing his claim that
race was a basis for his death sentence, his death sentence would be
reduced to life without the possibility of parole, which is the only
alternative to a death sentence for first degree murder in the State of
North Carolina.
The proposed law represents a positive step in redressing part
of the problem or racial discrimination in the North Carolina criminal
justice system and we urge readers to contact your state legislators to
request their support for the Racial Justice Act.
Please visit www.ncmoratorium.org for a sample letter and legislator addresses.
