The Charlotte Post - Challenge to Racial Justice Act

The Charlotte Post - Challenge to Racial Justice Act

"Two years after it became law, the Racial Justice Act is under attack by N.C. district attorneys who fear it could wreak havoc on public safety and want it repealed.

“No district attorney supports race as a factor in either death penalty cases or in the criminal justice system in general,” Susan Doyle, president of the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys, said in a statement. “While the name of the act sounds well-intentioned, the actual application is a threat to justice, truth and public safety.”

Supporters of the RJA, which prohibits seeking or imposing the death penalty on the basis of race, say that it is not a get of jail pass. For those who prove racial discrimination, their sentence will be commuted to a life without parole.

“It doesn’t let anybody get out of jail,” said Rep. Larry Womble, D-Forsyth, a primary sponsor of the act. “You have to spend the rest of your life in jail.”

But Doyle said that argument is misleading because prior to October 1, 1994, life without parole wasn’t an option under the Fair Sentencing Act, which governed sentencing during the 1980s and early 1990s. Anyone who committed a crime under that law would be eligible for parole after 20 years, which would include time served.

“The most concerning thing is that the law as it’s currently written could allow anywhere from 73 to 90 people who are currently death row inmates to be immediately considered for parole if their death sentences were vacated and life imposed,” she said.

A letter addressed to N.C. Sen. Phil Berger (D-Guilford), president pro tempore, on Nov. 14 on behalf of all 44 district attorneys, calls for an amendment the RJA. All but two of the DAs are white, and only one attorney didn’t sign the resolution. Durham District Attorney Tracey Cline, who didn’t sign it, declined comment.

The letter came just days after prosecutors failed in their attempt to stop Gregory Weeks, an African-American superior court judge, from presiding over the state’s first RJA case.

The N.C. RJA allows for relevant evidence to be used including statistical evidence to establish that race was a significant factor in seeking or imposing the death penalty."