RALEIGH, N.C. – The General Assembly gave final approval Wednesday to making North Carolina the second state in the country that allows statistical evidence to establish racial bias as behind prosecutors seeking or jurors rendering the death penalty.

The Senate voted 25-18 for a measure the NAACP and other advocates said was needed in a state that in less than three years has released three black men from prison who had been on death row. If Gov. Beverly Perdue signs the bill into law, North Carolina would join Kentucky with legislation supporters called the Racial Justice Act.

“The need for this is critical and self-evident,” Sen. Floyd McKissick, D-Durham, the bill’s primary sponsor.

In one case cited by supporters, then-Gov. Mike Easley commuted the death sentence of Robert Bacon Jr. to life in prison in 2001. An all-white jury had sentenced him to death for stabbing his lover’s husband to death. The woman, who is white and who lured her husband to the spot where he was killed, avoided a death sentence and has since been paroled.

The measure would allow judges to consider whether statistical data show race was a key factor in putting a defendant on trial for his life or receiving a death penalty. A judge who agrees with the evidence could limit a sentence to life in prison without parole.

District attorneys, sheriffs and victims advocates said the measure would make death penalty prosecutions too difficult. North Carolina has not had an execution in nearly three years.

For murder victims and their families, the bill “represents something … that will end up reopening a lot of old wounds that were still waiting for complete closure,” said Senate Minority Leader Phil Berger, R-Rockingham. “This also represents a significant departure from the jurisprudence that we have seen in
North Carolina and the United States that says cases are to be decided by the facts of the case.”

Since the state’s last execution in August 2006, the number of prosecutors winning death penalty convictions has nearly come to a halt and public support for executions has waned.

Just one convict was sent to death row last year and five people have been acquitted of the charges that initially placed them on death row since 2000. Of the 59 capital convicts who had their cases retried this decade, only two were again sentenced to death.

A November 2005 poll from Elon University found that 64 percent of the state’s adults supported capital punishment. The same poll found this March that 58 percent supported the death penalty while 28 percent opposed it. Less than half said this year that the death penalty was the most appropriate punishment for first-degree murder.

The North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys opposed the legislation. Forsyth County District Attorney Thomas Keith said lawmakers did not discuss that any local Superior Count judge’s ruling finding a history of racial discrimination could lead other judges to apply the precedent statewide.

“The ultimate goal is to give an additional protection,” for convicted murderers, Keith said.

Death row defendants would have one year to file a claim of racial bias in their death sentence. Keith said he feared some convicted killers could go from death row to being released on parole.

Almost half of the 163 killers on death row were sentenced for murders committed before October 1994, when the current sentencing system was put into place and mandatory life sentences became an option. If their sentences were reduced to life, those sentenced under the previous sentencing scheme could be considered for parole after serving 20 years, Keith said.

He cited the case of Bonnie Sue Clark, Bacon’s accomplice in the slaying of Clark’s husband. She was paroled last week after serving nearly 22 years of her life sentence.

RALEIGH, N.C.  – North Carolina House lawmakers again have narrowly approved legislation designed to prevent a murder suspect or death row prisoner with severe mental illness from facing capital punishment.

A House appropriations subcommittee voted 5-4 Wednesday in favor of creating a process whereby the death penalty would be removed as a sentencing option for a murder defendant with a severe mental disability. The maximum penalty would be life in prison without parole.

The measure passed a judiciary committee last week and now heads to the House floor.

Opponents said criminal procedure already allow jurors to take mental illness into account at sentencing. A state attorney says the bill creates a process that would cost millions of dollars to carry out if it became law.

RALEIGH, N.C.  – People on North Carolina’s death row or facing capital murder trials would have a new venue to argue racial bias before a judge in a bill that cleared the House.

The House agreed 61-54 Wednesday to the Racial Justice Act. The margin was similar to a vote on Tuesday. The measure now returns to the Senate, which already has approved a version of the bill.

The legislation would allow defendants to attempt to prove race was a significant factor in a death sentence or in a prosecutor seeking the death penalty. A judge who agrees could limit a sentence to life in prison without parole.

Bill supporters say the measure is about fairness. Opponents say it won’t work and would discourage prosecutors from seeking capital punishment.

RALEIGH, N.C. – With a NC Supreme Court ruling earlier this month clearing the legal impediments to the resumption of capital punishment in North Carolina, a new poll released today by the Civitas Institute shows public support for the death penalty remains strong.

A 600 sample live caller poll of voters asked if they supported the death penalty in North Carolina.  Sixty-four percent said yes. Only 28 percent said they opposed. Eight percent said they were unsure.

“North Carolinians remain in strong support of capital punishment as an appropriate penalty,” said Civitas Institute Executive Director Francis De Luca. “Supporters of the de facto moratorium that has been in place due to court challenges, which have now been resolved, face a public that now supports the death penalty slightly more than last year.”

The Civitas Institute polled this identical question just over one year ago in April 2008. In that poll, 60 percent said they supported the death penalty, while 27 percent said they were in opposition.

Opinion on the death penalty is highly polarized along racial makeup. Among Caucasian voters, 70 percent said they support it, while 21 percent said they oppose. However, among African-Americans, only 37 percent said they support the death penalty, while 54 percent said they are in opposition.

Full text of question:

Do you support the death penalty in North Carolina?

Yes – 64%

No – 28%

Not Sure – 8%

The study of 600 registered voters was conducted May 18-21, 2009 by Tel Opinion Research of Arlington, Virginia. All respondents were part of a fully representative sample of registered voters in North Carolina. For purposes of this study, voters we interviewed had to have voted in either the 2004, 2006 or 2008 general elections or were newly registered voters since 2008.

The confidence interval associated with a sample of this size is such that:95% of the time, results from 600 interviews (registered voters) will be within +-4% of the “True Values.”   “True Values” refer to the results obtained if it were possible to interview every person in North Carolina who had voted in either the 2004, 2006 or 2008 general elections or were newly registered voters since 2008.

RALEIGH, N.C. – Death penalty opponents plan to stage a demonstration outside North Carolina’s General Assembly.

The rally on Thursday outside the Legislative building calls on lawmakers to drop a bid to restart executions.

Legislation that passed the state Senate last week would allow an accused killer facing execution to challenge his conviction or death sentence if he can show that race played an inappropriate role. An amendment attached to the bill would allow executions to restart after a two-year halt.

North Carolina courts are sorting out legal questions surrounding executions, but a major barrier was removed this month when the state Supreme Court ruled the Medical Board couldn’t punish doctors who participate in executions.

RALEIGH, N.C. – The state Senate has unanimously agreed to require that more information be released about patient deaths at North Carolina’s public mental hospitals.

Senators on Tuesday approved a bill designed to ensure details about those deaths are publicly available. The bill now goes to the House.

Gov. Beverly Perdue supports the change, saying it would increase transparency in the mental health system. Written reports about patient deaths are now heavily redacted.

The proposal would require the name, gender and birth date of the deceased to be released, when and where the death happened and the circumstances. The information also would apply to deaths within seven days of leaving the hospital.

The bill also applies to facilities for substance abusers and the developmentally disabled.

Two Democratic state legislators from Winston-Salem will try again to pass a bill aimed at reducing racial disparities in the imposition of the death penalty.

Last year, the bill, known as the North Carolina Racial Justice Act, passed in the N.C. House of Representatives. But it died in the N.C. Senate without a hearing.

Supporters of the bill say they believe that it has a better chance this year. A new session of the General Assembly begins next week.

Rep. Larry Womble, D-Forsyth, said he believes that the bill was killed by electoral politics. Because 2008 was an election year, Democratic leaders in the Senate were reluctant to allow a vote on the bill, which is controversial because of how it attempts to deal with the delicate issues of race and capital punishment.

“That’s the only reason that I kept hearing. So now that there is no election year, what reason do they have?” Womble said. “So yes, I’m going to keep bringing it up.”

He and Rep. Earline Parmon, D-Forsyth, are the chief authors of the bill.

Even without an election looming, the bill is likely to be the subject of contention. It would allow defendants in capital cases to challenge the imposition of the death penalty by citing statistics showing racial disparities in other capital cases.

For instance, a black defendant could present statistics showing that, in his county, or in the state at large, blacks are more likely than whites to be subject to the death penalty. If the bill passes, such statistics could be enough for a judge to overrule a prosecutor’s decision to request the death penalty or a jury’s decision to sentence a defendant to death.

Prosecutors say that the Racial Justice Act has a noble intent and a good-sounding name, but it would make for bad law. They say that it would allow easily manipulated statistics to overcome the specific facts of a case.

“Death-penalty cases, each one has to be weighed on the merits of the case,” said Peg Dorer, the director of the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys. “It should never have anything to do with race, absolutely. But what this does is apply quotas and statistics, and that is inappropriate.”

Opponents of the death penalty have long argued that the death penalty is much more likely to be applied in cases involving black defendants, or white victims, or both. In North Carolina, blacks make up 54 percent of the inmates on death row but only 22 percent of the state’s overall population.

Racial disparities are just one element of a continuing debate over capital punishment. Several legal challenges have created a de facto moratorium on executions in North Carolina.

Jeremy Collins, the head of the N.C. Coalition for a Moratorium, said that his group’s main priority this session will be getting the Racial Justice Act passed. Collins said he believes that there are enough votes for it to pass in the House and the Senate.

Sen. Marc Basnight, the Democratic leader of the state Senate, wasn’t so sure. He said that the bill, as it was written last year, would be unlikely to get a majority of votes in the Senate. But he also said he and other Democratic senators have not had a chance to study it and possibly amend it. Unlike last year, the bill is likely to get a hearing in the Senate this year, Basnight said.

The House and the Senate are controlled by Democrats, but in recent years the Senate has tended to be more conservative.

Womble said he will re-file the bill in the same form as last year’s, but he would be open to adjustments as long as they did not change the main objective of the bill. “I look at it as a fairness bill. I look at it as just another tool in our toolbox,” he said.