Racial Justice Act
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The North Carolina Racial Justice Act of 2009 prohibited seeking or imposing the
death penalty Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty and formerly called judicial homicide, is the state-sanctioned killing of a person as punishment for actual or supposed misconduct. The sentence ordering that an offender be punished in s ...
on the basis of race. It passed both the North Carolina State Senate and the
North Carolina House of Representatives The North Carolina House of Representatives is one of the two houses of the North Carolina General Assembly. The House is a 120-member body led by a Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, Speaker of the House, who holds powers si ...
and was signed into law by Governor Bev Perdue. The law was repealed in 2013. (In 1998 Kentucky had passed the first Racial Justice Act in the country. By comparison, it was more narrowly drawn than that in North Carolina.)


Provisions

North Carolina's act identified types of evidence that might be considered by the court when considering whether race was a basis for seeking or imposing the death penalty and established a process by which relevant evidence might be used to establish that race was a significant factor in seeking or imposing the death penalty. The defendant had the burden of proving that race was a significant factor in seeking or imposing the death penalty. The state was allowed to offer evidence to rebut the claims or evidence of the defendant. If race was found to be a significant factor in the imposition of the death penalty, the death sentence would automatically be commuted to
life imprisonment Life imprisonment is any sentence (law), sentence of imprisonment under which the convicted individual is to remain incarcerated for the rest of their natural life (or until pardoned or commuted to a fixed term). Crimes that result in life impr ...
without the possibility of parole. The act applied retroactively to persons on death row, of which there were more than 145 in the state. From 2006, when the state adopted a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, to 2016, only 17 persons had been sentenced to death and added to those on death row.


North Carolina General Assembly repeal attempts

Under pressure from a group of 43 district attorneys, who expressed opposition to the act, citing the clog of the court system in the state, the
North Carolina Senate The North Carolina Senate is the Upper house, upper chamber of the North Carolina General Assembly, which along with the North Carolina House of Representatives—the lower chamber—comprises the state legislature of North Carolina. The Senate ...
passed a bill by a 27-14 vote on November 28, 2011, that would have effectively repealed the Racial Justice Act. However, on December 14,
Governor A governor is an politician, administrative leader and head of a polity or Region#Political regions, political region, in some cases, such as governor-general, governors-general, as the head of a state's official representative. Depending on the ...
Bev Perdue, a Democrat, vetoed the bill. She said that while she supports the death penalty, she felt it was "simply unacceptable for racial prejudice to play a role in the imposition of the death penalty in North Carolina." The state legislature did not have enough votes to override Perdue's veto.


Major revision (2012)

In 2012 the North Carolina General Assembly passed a major revision of the law authored by Rep. Paul Stam (R-Wake). The rewrite "severely restricts the use of statistics to only the county or judicial district where the crime occurred, instead of the entire state or region. It also says statistics alone are insufficient to prove bias and that the race of the victim cannot be taken into account." However, studies have shown that when the victim is white, Black defendants are more likely to be sentenced to death if convicted. The bill was vetoed by Gov. Perdue. But this time the legislature overrode the governor's veto.


Repeal

The North Carolina General Assembly voted to repeal the entire law in 2013. It included a provision that nullified any existing claims based on the law by making the repeal apply retroactively. Gov.
Pat McCrory Patrick Lloyd McCrory (born October 17, 1956) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 74th governor of North Carolina from 2013 to 2017. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the 53rd mayor of Charlotte ...
, a Republican elected in 2012, signed the repeal into law. On June 5, 2020, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled the portion of the repeal that retroactively voided claims based on the law was unconstitutional under the North Carolina state constitution's prohibition on ''ex post facto'' laws.


Appeals under act

On April 20, 2012, in the first case appealed under the Racial Justice Act, Judge Greg Weeks, then-Senior Resident
Superior Court In common law systems, a superior court is a court of general jurisdiction over civil and criminal legal cases. A superior court is "superior" in relation to a court with limited jurisdiction (see small claims court), which is restricted to civil ...
Judge in
Cumberland County Cumberland County may refer to: Australia * Cumberland County, New South Wales * the former name of Cumberland Land District, Tasmania, Australia Canada *Cumberland County, Nova Scotia United Kingdom * Cumberland, historic county *Cumberl ...
( Fayetteville), ruled in favor of the plaintiff Marcus Raymond Robinson that racial bias had influenced his case, automatically commuting his death sentence to life without parole. Robinson contended that when he was sentenced to death in 1994, prosecutors had deliberately kept Blacks off the jury. Robinson's lawyers cited a study from
Michigan State University College of Law The Michigan State University College of Law (Michigan State Law or MSU Law) is the law school of Michigan State University, a Public university, public research university in East Lansing, Michigan. Established in 1891 as the Detroit College o ...
indicating that prosecutors across North Carolina improperly used their
peremptory challenge The right of peremptory challenge is a legal right in jury selection for the attorneys to reject a certain number of potential jurors or judges without stating a reason. The idea behind peremptory challenges is that if both parties have contributed ...
s to systemically exclude qualified Black jurors from jury service. By 2014, three more cases had been successfully appealed. However, in 2015, the state's Supreme Court vacated the rulings on procedural grounds.


References

{{Reflist 2009 in American law Capital punishment in North Carolina North Carolina law Race legislation in the United States