North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act,

N

nutmeg

North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act is the only law of its kind in the country.

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FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — In a landmark ruling, a North Carolina judge Friday vacated the death penalty of a convicted black murderer, saying prosecutors across the state had engaged for years in a deliberate and systematic pattern of racial discrimination while striking black potential jurors in death penalty cases.

The decision by Superior Court Judge Gregory A. Weeks in Cumberland County, N.C., could help set a precedent nationwide in death penalty cases, which for years have included arguments by black defendants and civil rights lawyers that prosecutors keep blacks off juries for overtly racial reasons.

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In this case, Robinson’s legal team showed that prosecutors rejected about 50% of potential black jurors and only 15% of non-black jurors.

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That disparity is enough “to support an inference of intentional discrimination,” wrote the judge.

39 year old Robinson was convicted of murdering a white teenager in 1994.

Tornblom died from a shotgun blast to the face during a robbery that netted $27.

Tornblom’s stepmother, Patricia Tornblom, and his father, Richard Tornblom, have bitterly opposed the act and told The Times earlier this year that Robinson should be executed. They sat in silence Friday as Weeks read his ruling.

cont on link..

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/...olina-racial-justice-20120420,0,7385785.story
 
Quote from nutmeg:

North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act is the only law of its kind in the country.

-----------------------

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — In a landmark ruling, a North Carolina judge Friday vacated the death penalty of a convicted black murderer, saying prosecutors across the state had engaged for years in a deliberate and systematic pattern of racial discrimination while striking black potential jurors in death penalty cases.

The decision by Superior Court Judge Gregory A. Weeks in Cumberland County, N.C., could help set a precedent nationwide in death penalty cases, which for years have included arguments by black defendants and civil rights lawyers that prosecutors keep blacks off juries for overtly racial reasons.

-----------------

In this case, Robinson’s legal team showed that prosecutors rejected about 50% of potential black jurors and only 15% of non-black jurors.

---------------------

That disparity is enough “to support an inference of intentional discrimination,” wrote the judge.

39 year old Robinson was convicted of murdering a white teenager in 1994.

Tornblom died from a shotgun blast to the face during a robbery that netted $27.

Tornblom’s stepmother, Patricia Tornblom, and his father, Richard Tornblom, have bitterly opposed the act and told The Times earlier this year that Robinson should be executed. They sat in silence Friday as Weeks read his ruling.

cont on link..

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/...olina-racial-justice-20120420,0,7385785.story
More...

Ever thought it just might be the prosecutors are not prejudiced but are discovering that 50% of blacks really are unsuitable for jury duty for one reason or another.
in no particular order
1) overtly racist, homophobic, religious bias
2) under-educated
3) criminal history
4) on the dole (poor work history)
 
As a resident of North Carolina, let me state that the "Racial Justice Act" is one of the most absurd pieces of Democratic legislation to pass in our state. I am hoping that it is overturned in our state legislature and come November we will have a reasonable Republican governor who will not veto the overturning of this obscene law.

The legislation basically serves as a round-about way of abolishing the death penalty in our state. Every single death row criminal (black, white, red, yellow, etc.) has applied under the statue that they were convicted due to racial bias. It will cost the state a minimum of $200M to re-try all of these cases.

Statistical math experts have demonstrated when reviewing all the death penalty cases as a group that no bias exists. This law came about because anit-death penalty liberal Michigan State University law professor Barbara O'Brien fabricated a study that claims "she couldn't find anything in her data other than race to explain why potential black jurors are rejected more than twice as often by prosecutors for North Carolina death penalty trials compared to whites."
http://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/story/10909134/

Of course, the claims were extended by law to all death penalty cases and is now being used by lawyers to overturn all the state's death penalty cases.

In the meantime, there are many families of the victims who have waited years for final justice and now they are being denied and further victimized through the Racial Justice Act.

"Robinson and co-defendant Roderick Williams Jr. murdered Tornblom in 1991 after the teen gave his killers a ride from a Fayetteville convenience store. Tornblom was forced to drive to a field where he was shot with a sawed-off shotgun."
http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/11005360/
 
This is just another twist on the whole racial profiling argument. It's an attempt to deflect responsibility and place the onus on innocent people while excusing criminality. Why would a neighborhood watch volunteer in a neighborhood suffering breakins find a young possibly black guy in a hoodie wandering around in the rain at night suspicious? Maybe because that is the statistical profile of an overwhelming percentage of those doing such crimes.

Why do prosecutors knock blacks off juries with black defendants, particularly in horrible crimes where whites were the victims? Could it have something to do with the fact that some percentage of blacks are so racist they can't see beyond skin color? Ity's not just the uneducated either. Would you really want Eric Holder and obama on a jury if you were a prosecutor?

Blacks voted 98% for obama but that wasn't racial, no sir. It was the whites who didn't vote for him who were racist.

And isn't it ironic that the study used to justify this ridiculous law itself used a form of racial profiling by basically assuming that race was the likely motivating factor for knocking blacks off juries?

I wonder if the Zimmrman prosecutors will be allowed to kick whites off the jury for no reason other than race?
 
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