Posted on 08/16/2009 4:15:43 PM PDT by NCjim
RALEIGH, N.C. — Gov. Beverly Perdue on Tuesday made North Carolina the second state to allow defendants to use statistical evidence to prove racial bias played a role in putting them on death row.
North Carolina joins Kentucky with a law that aims to prevent black defendants from being punished more harshly what whites.
The law allows judges to consider statistical evidence that indicates race played a key factor in putting a disproportionate number of people from a racial group on death row, or on trial for their lives. A judge also could consider sworn testimony from legal system insiders like prosecutors, law enforcement officers, or jurors that death sentences were sought or imposed more often on members of one race than another. A judge who agrees with the evidence could limit a sentence to life in prison without parole.
"I'm a supporter of the death penalty, have been for years. But I've always believed as a citizen ... that the burden is heavier, the very heaviest, in death penalty cases," Perdue said before signing legislation supporters have called the Racial Justice Act. The law is "a grand step forward to ensure that when North Carolina hands down our state's harshest punishment, the decision is based on fact, not prejudice."
(Excerpt) Read more at wral.com ...
I would think a more equitable law if they have to bring race/ethnicity into it, would be % of a given minority given death sentence relative to numbers of that group being convicted of violent crimes. In time there will be an enormous backlash to this law.
That’s cause all those people from Mass. and VT moved here!
I didn’t vote for that creep.
Perdue or Obama?
Neither, obviously.
I dunno about that. The poor, you have always had with you, especially in states in the south. You have always been a red state even with them. The retirees have flocked there in more recent years, and then the landscape started to change........
Tar Heels learning elections have consequences. Put a liberal in office and this is what you get. In New York the few conservatives left have seen this play out over the years. We always had the NY State Senate to rely on, now that’s gone and things look worse here than ever.
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