Extreme racial bias and the death penalty: North Carolina’s experience

A landmark case exposes rampant racial bias in the death penalty.  Several years ago, North Carolina briefly had the “Racial Justice Act” as part of its law.  It would explicitly allow defendants to argue racial bias in their cases in ways that had not been allowed before — and were not allowed in other state.  But after a short time, North Carolina’s Legislature repealed it.  Now racial bias in jury selection and other aspects of the death penalty system is rampant again.  See this article:  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/24/landmark-us-case-to-expose-rampant-racial-bias-behind-the-death-penalty

 

The ACLU provides this additional information about North Carolina’s experiment with a “Racial Justice Act” and that state’s cruel return to racial bias in death penalty cases:  https://www.aclu.org/blog/capital-punishment/racial-disparities-and-death-penalty/will-north-carolinas-supreme-court

 

See this news about 6 death penalty cases for which North Carolina’s “Racial Justice Act” was relevant.  These 6 cases were being appealed in North Carolina near the end of the summer of 2019:  https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/ldf-to-argue-death-penalty-cases-before-north-carolina-supreme-court?track=DE20H30&utm_source=1908supporterupdate&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fy20supporterupdate

… And ALSO THIS 11-minute video of a NAACP legal defense attorney arguing one of the cases:  https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/ldf-to-argue-death-penalty-cases-before-north-carolina-supreme-court?track=DE20H40&utm_source=1908jinheelee&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fy20actionalerts

… And see more information at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s website, including this:  https://www.naacpldf.org/press-release/ldf-to-argue-death-penalty-cases-before-north-carolina-supreme-court?track=DE20H40&utm_source=1908jinheelee&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=fy20actionalerts

 

Long-term systemic racial bias is what finally caused Washington State’s Supreme Court to throw out Washington State’s death penalty just a few years ago.  See information about that in several of my blog posts at the “Death Penalty” part of this blog, www.parallaxperspectives.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About GlenAnderson 1499 Articles
Since the late 1960s Glen Anderson has devoted his life to working as a volunteer for peace, nonviolence, social justice, and progressive political issues. He has worked through many existing organizations and started several. Over the years he has worked especially for such wide-ranging goals as making peace with Vietnam, eliminating nuclear weapons, converting from a military economy to a peacetime economy, abolishing the death penalty, promoting nonviolence at all levels throughout society, and helping people organize and strategize for grassroots movements to solve many kinds of problems. He writes, speaks, and conducts training workshops on a wide variety of topics. Since 1987 he has produced and hosted a one-hour cable TV interview program on many kinds of issues. Since 2017 he has blogged at https://parallaxperspectives.org He lives in Lacey near Olympia WA. You can reach him at (360) 491-9093 glen@parallaxperspectives.org