NC Advocates for Justice and NAACP Call on Senate Leader to Commit to Racial Justice in Face of Inaccurate Opposition

RALEIGH, N.C., Nov. 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- The NC Advocates for Justice and the NAACP today called on Sen. Phil Berger to reaffirm his commitment to The Racial Justice Act.  

In a hand delivered letter, NCAJ's Dick Taylor and NAACP's Rev. William Barber refute inaccurate claims from the state's Conference of District Attorneys regarding the Cumberland County case of Marcus Robinson, in which qualified African-Americans were wrongly excluded from the jury pool.  

The letter cites a recent Michigan State University study of North Carolina capital cases.  The study found that, even when controlling for different circumstances, for individuals who killed white victims the odds of receiving the death penalty increased two and half times.  African-Americans and Native Americans, according to MSU, also faced apparent discrimination in other ways.

The letter concludes, "The courts of North Carolina have been doing an exemplary job of managing litigation under the RJA, both in terms of avoiding unnecessary costs and in terms of expediting review of serious claims of racial discrimination.  Now is not the time for the General Assembly to tinker with the statute and create potentially new avenues of appeal."

The complete letter is here. For more, please contact Todd Barlow, [email protected], and/or Gerda Stein, [email protected].

SOURCE NC Advocates for Justice

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