If you can, please take a few minutes out of your day today to join with caring and thoughtful people to help hold the out-of-control General Assembly accountable at a “Rein them in Rally.”
When: Today — Monday, April 23 at 11:00 A.M.
Where: In front of the General Assembly building on Jones Street in Raleigh.
For more information and to RSVP, please visit the rally website. See you there!
The Center for Public Integrity, in collaboration with Global Integrity and Public Radio International, just released an eye-opening “State Integrity Investigation” that assesses all states’ transparency, accountability and anti-corruption mechanisms. The data-driven ranking system gave five states a B grade; 19 states received a C; 18 states received a D; and eight states earned an F. North Carolina received a C- and is a featured example in the investigation – conflicts of interest in the billboard law as well as the lack of sanctions for lobbyists who fail to register. Read More
State legislation passed this year requires the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) to study land-based hydraulic fracturing for drilling oil and gas. Fracking, as the method is commonly known, is currently illegal in North Carolina. Our legislators are spending $100,000 on the study, many of whom are intent on lifting the ban. Public comments are now being taken by DENR on a draft outline for the study and the first of two mandated public hearings was held last night in Sanford.
Send in the mirrors. Obviously there’s a shortage, judging by the lawmakers and district attorneys who acknowledge racial bias in the justice system in neighboring counties, but never in theirs.
The North Carolina Racial Justice Act, which simply allows defendants in capital trials to present another piece of evidence that race was a significant factor in their case, is up for a concurrence vote in the Senate today.
Senators are being asked to restore the bill’s original intent of securing fairness in the ultimate punishment. It strips out amendments inserted by Senators eager for the state to resume executions, and whom still voted against the bill even after their amendments were added.
The Racial Justice Act has been subjected to a cruel, years-long political game among legislators wary that their votes might make them vulnerable in an election year. But more than most questions put before our lawmakers, this bill is about life and death judgments. Lawmakers have long ignored racial prejudices and assumptions that are typically unspoken and infinitely present in capital sentencing.
In the last year, three innocent black men were released from death row. It’s bad enough that those men served a combined 41 years in prison on death row, but they would have been executed without the state’s court-imposed moratorium on the death penalty.
Today blacks make up 20 percent of the state’s population but 60 percent of those on death row.
It’ll take Senators willing to put away the politics for a day, and who have the conviction to take a hard look in the mirror before voting, to push percentages like that into the history of another era.
For more information on the NC Racial Justice Act – Senate Bill 461, please visit www.ncmoratorium.org.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1576/t/6273/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=27713
The Carolina Justice Policy Center is a partner group of the NC Coalition for a Moratorium on Executions.
Death Row Exonerees
It has been more than two years since anyone was executed in North Carolina. In the last few weeks, several legislative actions and court decisions have made it seem likely that executions will resume in the near future. What is really going on?
Medical Board
On May 1st, the North Carolina Supreme Court issued its decision in a lawsuit between the North Carolina Medical Board and the NC Department of Correction. The Medical Board, an agency responsible for licensing and regulation of doctors in North Carolina, had issued a policy stating that doctors cannot ethically participate in executions. The Department of Correction claimed that it was unable to find a doctor willing to assist with lethal injection, and that it was therefore unable to execute its inmates. The DOC sued, and the NCSC ruled that because the legislature has required physician participation in executions, it is not within the power of the Medical Board to sanction doctors for doing so.
Council of State
On May 13th, Wake County judge Donald Stephens issued a decision denying and dismissing the claims brought by several death row inmates against the Council of State, a body of elected officials responsible for, among other things, approving North Carolina’s lethal injection protocol. The inmates had alleged that the Council did not follow proper administrative procedure in approving the protocol. Judge Stephens found that the inmates did not have standing to challenge the Council’s decision, and that the Council’s approval was not subject to further review by any court.
Lethal Injection
Judge Stephens also issued an order setting a hearing during the June 1 session of court for oral argument on the remaining 8th Amendment issues in the inmates’ case. Both parties are expected to brief the impact of the US Supreme Court’s decision in Baze v. Rees on the question of whether the North Carolina lethal injection protocol is cruel and unusual.
Legislature
The Senate chamber of the North Carolina General Assembly voted this week to approve the Racial Justice Act, which would allow pre-trial defendants as well as death row inmates to challenge the decision to seek or impose the death penalty in their case if it was based on impermissible racial bias. The bill passed with an amendment which prohibited the Medical Board and other health care agencies from disciplining medical professionals involved in executions, removed the requirement that the Council of State approve the execution protocol, and mandated that executions cannot occur more than once every 30 days.
What Happens Now
There will be no appeal in the Medical Board litigation, but it is possible for the inmates to appeal Judge Stephens’ decision in the Council of State matter; some of Stephens’ findings were contrary to an earlier ruling by another judge. A specific date has not yet been set for the hearing on the 8th Amendment issues related to lethal injection. Finally, the House has yet to pass the Racial Justice Act, and if it does, any discrepancies between the House and Senate versions of the bill will need to be worked out.
It is hard to say exactly if or when executions will resume in North Carolina. Injunctions are still in place preventing the State from re-setting executions dates for the six residents of death row who were scheduled to be executed before the moratorium began.
What we do know is that our system of capital punishment remains imperfect. In the years we have been without executions, three innocent men were freed from death row, having served a combined 41 years and faced death for crimes they did not commit. Many of those who will face execution when the moratorium ends were convicted in an era when the standards for performance by defense counsel and fairness from prosecutors were far below what they are today. No one should be executed until all litigation is resolved and the known flaws with North Carolina’s death penalty have been remedied.
