Death Penalty Key Facts

1. Information on the NC Racial Justice Act:

The "NC Racial Justice Act", passed in 2009, seeks to address racial disparities in NC's capital punishment system. Under the RJA, a defendant would be allowed to present factual evidence to support his or her claim that a sentence of death was improperly obtained on the basis of race. If a defendant is successful in establishing this claim, a court could impose a sentence of life without parole instead of death.

Race should never be a factor when considering a punishment as irreversible as a death sentence. That is why we urge the NCGA to preserve the NC Racial Justice Act as is and ask legislators to oppose any efforts to change the law.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will murderers be paroled?

No, under the new law, no murderers will be set free – the law explicitly states that if a death row inmate gets relief, he will be sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Can race be a factor in wrongful convictions?

Yes. Since a court-imposed suspension of executions went into effect in 2007, three North Carolina death row inmates have been exonerated. All three men are African-American. In all of the cases, at least one of the victims was white. One defendant was sentenced to death by an all-white jury.

Does the public support the Racial Justice Act?

Yes. The Racial Justice Act was supported by Republicans and Democrats, and by supporters and opponents of the death penalty. According to a statewide poll conducted July 6-7, 2009, by Public Policy Polling, a majority of North Carolina voters support the intent of this new law:

If a defendant can prove that the death penalty was sought or obtained in his case because of racial bias, do you think he should be able to present that evidence of bias, including statistical evidence, to the court? If yes, press

1. If no, press 2.

Yes ................................................................. 67%

No................................................................... 33%

Why use statistics?

Statistics are used routinely and appropriately in housing and employment discrimination cases, and should likewise be relevant in cases of life or death. Prosecutors will have an opportunity to rebut statistical evidence showing with their own evidence that race was not a factor in their decisions.

Race and the Death Penalty: Why We Needed the RJA in the First Place

One of the most fundamental guarantees of our criminal justice system is that people charged with a crime receive a fair trial, regardless of their race, gender, or national origin. Individuals with widely different views on criminal justice issues agree that guarantee is essential both to ensure fair trials and to maintain public support for the system that administers them.

But there is now evidence that the current capital punishment system in North Carolina is not living up to that constitutional promise and that race plays a significant role in determining who is sentenced to death. Racial bias is playing an improper role in jury deliberations and statistical analyses show that the race of the victim is a critical factor in who receives the death penalty.

Racism Admitted in the Jury Room

Kenneth Rouse is an African-American man who was sentenced to death in Randolph County by an all-white jury that had a member who is an admitted racist and believes that “black men rape white women so they can brag to their friends.” The juror admitted in a sworn affidavit that “blacks do not care about living as much as whites do.” The juror routinely referred to African-Americans as “n------s,” and stated that “bigotry” was

influential in his decision to vote for death. The juror admitted that he lied in order to sit on the jury. Rouse is still on death row.

Raymond Rowsey was executed in 2004 despite the fact that the lone African-American juror at his Alamance County trial did not want to issue a death sentence. She stated in an affidavit that she was intimidated and humiliated by other jurors and told them she thought her race was a factor in why they did not respect her opinion. She tried to tell the judge that she did not want to sentence Rowsey to death, but was also intimidated by him and failed to do so clearly.

Robert Bacon was sentenced to death by an all-white jury in Onslow County in 1991. Just before Bacon was to be executed, a woman who sat on his jury came forward and revealed that the jury made derogatory racial comments during deliberations and sentenced him to death in large part because of their racist views. Bacon was granted clemency days before his scheduled execution in 2001.

Victim’s Race Affects Death Sentences

A recent comprehensive study on race and the death penalty in North Carolina found that the odds of getting a death sentence increase three and a half times if the victim is white rather than a person of color. ( “Race and the Death Penalty in North Carolina” Dr. Isaac Unah, Professor John C. Boger, UNC-Chapel Hill, April 16, 2001 ) This study mirrors previous studies conducted in other states and by the federal government.

The UNC study is also confirmed anecdotally by a review of the race of the victims of the 31 people executed in North Carolina since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977: more than 80% of the victims of those executed were white, while only about 40% of North Carolina homicide victims are white.

Embed video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiCZK7AxUCQ&feature=player_embedded

2. On December 2, 2005 Kenneth Boyd of North Carolina became the 1,000th person executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. Executions resumed in 2008 after a de facto moratorium was effectively lifted by the Supreme Court following its decision upholding lethal injection. But only the South returned to regular executions, accounting for 95% of executions carried out in the country in 2008. NEED UPDATE HERE – NO EXECUTIONS IN LAST 2 YEARS?

3. Death Row Inmates in North Carolina by race, Winter 2008

Total = 167
Black = 87 or 52%
White = 66 or 40 %
Latino = 4 or 2%
Native American = 9 or 5%
Asian = 1 or .6%

4. The most comprehensive study in the country found that the death penalty costs North Carolina $2.16 million per execution over the costs of sentencing murderers to life imprisonment. The majority of those costs occur at the trial level.

5. Percentage of executions by region:

	1999	2007	2008
South (35 executions in 2008)	75%	86%	95%
Midwest (2)	12%	12%	5%
West (0)	12%	2%	3%
Northeast (0)	1%	0%	0%
Texas (18)	36%	62%	49%

6. Death Penalty Statistics 2010 2009 2000

	2010	2009	2000
Executions	46	52	85
New Inmates under death sentence	114	112	234
Percent of Executions by Resion
South (35 executions)	76%	87%	76%
Midwest (8 executions)	17%	13%	6%
West (3)	7%	0%	5%
Northeast (0)	0%	0%	0%
TEXAS (17)	40%

7. Nationally, there have been 138 exonerations since 1973. 7 of those were from North Carolina.

8. Of the persons on death row, 50.5 percent do not have a high school diploma or GED.

9. A recent study examined 15 death penalty cases in 7 states. In every case in which an African American was the defendant, racial discrimination was a determining factor in the conviction. In many cases, prosecutors excluded jurors based on race, a practice found to be an unconstitutional form of racial discrimination by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986 (Batson v. Kentucky). In some cases, lawyers – both for the prosecution and defense – used racist language to inflame the jury. In at lease one case, the judge and prosecutor were later found to have engaged in persistent racial discrimination.

SOURCES:

1. http://www.acluofnorthcarolina.org/files/SB9_HB615_Factsheet.pdf

2. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/YearEnd05.pdf pg 4.

3. http://naacpldf.org/files/publications/DRUSA_Winter_2010.pdf pg. 38.

4. same

5. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/FactSheet.pdf pg. 4.

6. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/2010YearEnd-Final.pdf pg 1

7. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-and-death-penalty#inn-st

8. same

9. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/pub/html/cp/2006/tables/cp06st05.cfm