North Carolina's Death Penalty

The Racial Justice Act is new piece of legislation that was added in North Carolina last year, but the consequences of the law are still being debated. The Racial Justice Act requires "judges to let any inmate off death row if the judge finds that race was a 'significant factor' in the death sentence" and allows "future capital-murder defendants to claim racial bias" (Nathan Koppel, Wall Street Journal). Instead of being on death row, if the convict's case is successful in arguing that racial bias was a major factor in the death sentence, the defendant would have life sentences without a chance of parole. Although I would like to believe that the juries that convict the defendants are not skewed by the race of the defendant, such wishful thinking is just not true. I am in favor of justifying those defendants whose death penalty may have been wrongfully determined, but the Racial Justice Act just makes it too easy for the inmates to claim racial-bias of the jury to delay their sentence. In fact, 152 of the 159 inmates on death row have filed claims about racial bias regarding their death sentence. Not only will the trials take months to process and actually finish, but it is also difficult to prove that "race was a 'significant factor' in the death sentence." Not all cases will have the concrete evidence to prove there was racial bias in the decision of the inmates' sentences. In addition the new law "allows murder defendants to try to prove bias through broad statistical evidence, such as data showing that North Carolina prosecutors. . . have sought the death penalty more frequently against black defendants or in cases involving a white victim" (Nathan Koppel, Wall Street Journal). I just think it's ridiculous that "broad statistical evidence" could even be considered evidence in the first place. It is too easy to overgeneralize and skew the statistics to favor the defendant. On one hand the North Carolina prosecutors may be using the death penalty more for black defendants because the prosecutors are bias, but on the other hand, the death penalty may be used because there are just more black defendants who deserve the death sentence. I completely agree with the North Carolina Republican legislator Sarah Stevens' remark that "you shouldn't try a case on statistics. . . [because] statistics can be manipulated."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704362404575479793817782142.html?mod=ITP_pageone_1