Herbert L. White, Charlotte Post, August 7, 2009
The state Senate passed the N.C. Racial Justice Act by a 25-18 margin Thursday and Gov. Bev Perdue is expected to sign the bill into law. The House passed the bill last month.
Studies have concluded that ethnic minorities—especially blacks—and the poor are more likely to be sentenced to death than whites. North Carolina has 163 inmates on death row, including 98 African Americans. Capital punishment opponents point to a 2001 study by researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill that found that the odds of a murder defendant condemned to death in North Carolina increase if the victim is white. Supporters of the bill contend its passage is the first step in closing racial disparities in how capital punishment is applied in the South, where the number of condemned inmates tends to be higher.
Kentucky is the only other state with such a law that allows death penalty challenges based on ethnicity.
“This is a great spiritual victory for North Carolina, the South, and our whole country,” said Stephen Dear, executive director of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty. “We have passed through the horrors of Jim Crow, through the racial politics of Jesse Helms, and now we have come to acknowledge that racial bias infects our courts over one of the greatest powers citizens give to government, the power to take human life.”
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Under the bill, death row inmates and future capital case defendants could use statistics from death-penalty cases to show racial disparities in how death sentences are applied. If a judge finds the application is racially biased, the death sentence can be converted to life in prison without parole. District attorneys opposed the bill, contending race is rarely used to determine how capital punishment is meted out.
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Original article
(Posted on August 11, 2009)
Comments
Quite a few black murder victims of other blacks are predatory thugs or killers themselves.So let those facts be considered in any appeal.
This looks just like the New Haven firefighter case where the whole justification for cancelling the promotional test was the so-called disparate impact test. In that case there was no suggestion that the test was unfair, just that the blacks did not pass. This is exactly the same, more blacks are on death row for murder so there must be some discrimination because there is a disparate impact. However, the law operates on an individual basis and each case is looked at separately, and you can’t lump everyone together based on their race. Blacks continue to lobby for special rights and treatment based solely on their race. To put it simply, that is no way to run a railroad!
Whites convicted of first degree murder are more likely actually to be executed than blacks convicted of first degree murder. I have read that the disparity might be as high as 2-to-1.
Capital punishment opponents point to a 2001 study by researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill that found that the odds of a murder defendant condemned to death in North Carolina increase if the victim is white.
Does that only include black perps, or does it include all perps? In either case, I think the reason is that black on black murders aren’t necessarily brutal or pre-meditated affairs, they’re merely a visceral reaction of passionate hate and rage. Blacks who murder whites, or whites who murder whites, tend to pre-meditate the crime.
How many of the 98 blacks on death row in North Carolina are there for crimes against other blacks? How many are violent repeat offenders? “Studies” have also concluded that blacks commit far more heinous, senseless, violent crimes worthy of the death penalty than whites. When will we ever begin to look at racial disparities in behavior honestly? It seems as soon as any disparity is determined to exist it is automatically assumed that discrimination is the cause.
“Capital punishment opponents point to a 2001 study by researchers at UNC-Chapel Hill that found that the odds of a murder defendant condemned to death in North Carolina increase if the victim is white.”
Capital punishment can only be applied when there are aggravating circumstances. These are usually circumstances exhibiting extreme callousness. The disparity noted by the 2001 study is not surprising, since blacks’ murder of whites tends to be more callous and cruel (e.g., with rape, torture and mutilation thrown in) as compared to blacks’ murder of their own kind (usually in pedestrian drug related activity). In fact, the disparity shows that whites are — as usual — the real victims of black-perpetrated injustice. But that truth will never be articulated in the mainstream media.
The problem is that we don’t execute all murderers, black or white. Once you make exceptions, you get people hiding behing the color of their skin or the level of their IQ to claim discrmination. Fry them all. And you can take that literally if you like.
“blacks—and the poor are more likely to be sentenced to death than whites.”
Next will be the shocking discovery that these groups are more likely to be killers. But oops, one shouldn’t put these folks into a group. That would be stereotyping. Unless lumping them in a group serves the whims of a Marxist professor somewhere. Then it’s full speed ahead, and not profiling them would be evil.
The black community overwhelmingly believes that convicted black murderers shouldn’t be punished for their crimes solely because of their race. Note how they never show concern that a white man on death row might be innocent or a victim of prejudice by the court system. This proves that the black race is made up of ignorant, hateful racists. There is no reasoning with or appeasing such unreasonable bigots, thus the white liberals who try are fools.
I oppose the death penalty. Innocent people have in fact been excuted whatever the race. There are prosecutors out there who frame innocent people for no other reason than to show that they ar tough on crime. If you don’t think this goes on, you are not paying attetenion to what goes on in the crimminal justice system. Prosecutors chet and lie. Jurors will and do send innocent to jail and to their death.
Just take a look at what happened to Kelly Michaels.
Srsly?
Executions in the U. S.:
2007:
2006:
2005:
2004:
If this is based on the population of murderers, won’t this hurt black murderers more then white murderers?
If this is based off the total population, rather than just murderers, why don’t they have a law where 50% of death row inmates have to be women?
I suppose the murderers of Eve Carson get a pass now right? They can spend the next ten years ( if they get that much) lifting weights, sodomizing young White inmates and other nefarious activities until they’re release where they can go back home and find another coed to rape and murder.
“Studies have concluded that ethnic minorities—especially blacks—and the poor are more likely to be sentenced to death than whites.”
Not only is this untrue (and the Act’s naming spurious) but it curiously uses two classes defined by race and compares them to a class defined by income. Apples to oranges, anybody? Whites can’t be poor?
