NC GOP wants to make it easier to kill blacks

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North Carolina GOP Wants to Make it Easier to Kill Blacks

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I had to read this when I saw the headline & see what it was about.

The GOP controlled General Assembly wants to repeal the 2009 Racial Justice Act, which allowed judges in death penalty cases to consider statistics on racial bias when deciding death penalty cases. The governor has already vetoed this attempt & an override is unlikely.

Garrick, aren't you in NC? Are you aware of this? if so, what do you make of it?
 
Caroline Forbes said:
Honestly, shouldn't the judges be making the decision based on the case and not because of race?
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that's a lovely idea & yes that's the way it SHOULD be but we both know its often not. how else can you account for the fact that whites use illegal drugs @ a rate 5 X that of blacks but blacks are prosecuted & jailed for it @ a rate 13 X that of whites (u.s. justice dept stats).

when it comes to the application of the legal system @ all levels...it's flawed, slanted & often unfair to anyone who isnt white (& male).

hell there was a time when a black man would be killed for even LOOKING @ a white woman & that was considered fair & legal. laws had to be put in place to stop some of these obscene practices but it never really stops the racism, it only makes it become more covert until now...where as of 2008, it seems to be bursting out @ the seams back to the surface again.
 
My question is whether making it more unfair would actually solve the problem...two wrongs not making a right and all that. Maybe the focus should be on FAIRLY prosecuting and sentencing people rather than trying to apply a band aid.

And at some point, we have to stop basing judgements on things that occurred 50 years ago, as horrible as they might be.
 
Caroline Forbes said:
My question is whether making it more unfair would actually solve the problem...two wrongs not making a right and all that. Maybe the focus should be on FAIRLY prosecuting and sentencing people rather than trying to apply a band aid.

And at some point, we have to stop basing judgements on things that occurred 50 years ago, as horrible as they might be.
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the stats i mentioned about the glaring dispairity & unfairness of penalizing illegal drug use/posession among whites/blacks is current.

referencing the grim & appalling racial based injustices of past decades (& in many cases still occurring today only in more covert fashion) only served to point out why legislation like this was necessary in the first place.

w/out proper guarantee that things WOULD be handled in a truly FAIR & unbiased manner, it would be unwise to take away the only buffers that protect ppl who are historically targeted for scrutiny & harsh legal punishment in overwhelming numbers.
 
I just don't think that laws like this are the way to ensure equality. I think there's better ways than telling a judge to be lenient with the death penalty because racial bias statistically exists. If a judge isn't ruling based on the facts of the case then he shouldn't be a judge - so why not go after dishonest office holders?
 
I live in NC.

The issue is that the all-white juries were actually joking about the defendants racially (including the "N" word), holding things like interracial relationships against them in sentencing, and actually hanging out for a few minutes before sending back a guilty and a death sentence without actually debating the case at all. Jurors actually cam eforward later to admit that they bragged about their lack of bias to get on the jury so they could brag later about being happy to put someone Black to death.

That was the impetus behind the law, that a defendant could SPECIFICALLY use these facts when they came out later to get off death row or get a new trial. Before, these types of facts would be dismissed as not enough to get a new trial or to get someone's death sentence commuted.

The other, harsher truth is this: I am a college-educated Black male who has had only 4 addresses in his lifetime (~ 39 years btw) and have NEVER been called for jury duty. In fact, I know of almost no one who has and all of my family votes and has lived in the same places essentially all my life. Yet jury after jury cannot find ONE African American. Something is wrong there.
 
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