11:03 am ET
Feb 16, 2012

Criminal Law

What, Exactly, Does NC’s ‘Racial Justice Act’ Mean? We’ll Know Soon

    • Hey Ashby, by definition I don't think there's such a thing as a 17 year old man. Shouldn't it read a 17 year old male?

    • So now what, if you are black, you can use that excuse to get off death row.? Forget the fact that you committed a crime, focus on the dangeling watch as it goes back and forth, your eyes are getting heavy, you are losing your intelligence, you are becoming liberal...
      PC pathetic-ness...

    • Normally I do not back claims of bias and discrimination but in the case of the death penalty I make an exception. Minorities in general and backs in particular have a valid point. When whites commit death penalty eligable crime it is nearly always plea bargained down to something else blacks and minorites get the penalty. In Spokane county Washington where I live death penalty poster boy serial killer Robert Yates pled guilty and was given a life sentence. This guy who killed many people over many years is who this penalty is for yet he was spared and our idiot prosecuter traveled to other juridictions to argue that his deal with Yates covered him there as well. What our blacks and minorities to think about this beside racism? Nothing because quite frankly there is no other explanation.

    • Two things-
      The victim was a 17 year old white man? No, a 17 year old white child, not bothering anybody, but whose life was taken by this man.
      Did the defense strike twice as many white jurors? I'd like to know that answer.

    • My question is why is everyone willing to ignore what got this man the death sentence, in NC you have to do a whole lot more than killing a person in a robbery to rate that, and yet it seems to have been edited out!

    • the killer wanted to get whitey. the only racial argument can be against the murderer. He was the racist. Please get your facts before you make assumptions regarding this killer. His prior crime was also gun possesion, he did not succeed the first time. He suceeded the second time, he killed a white boy. It was his aim to kill, he has no remorse. His prison record is also not stellar, if he lives, he will continue to participate in gang activity and other violent crimes against fellow prisioners and guards.

    • You who are concerned think on this. After he was arrestred at Harper's Ferry John Brown was convicted by a jury and was hung 51 days later. How can it be that our criminal law has had this conviction hanging on its books since 1994? And, cases just like it all over the country? We obviously have a new and very different criminal law. We got the new and different law the way our forefathers got the Tea Tax and the Stamp Act. I t was promulgated by political power that will take our consent as granted until we rebell. We are in a very bad fix for "we the People" lost the protection of our Constitution..

    • Dear Thinker,
      Please note that John Brown was hanged 51 days after conviction. That he was hung is only of importance to Mrs. Brown.
      Signed, Your Third Grade Teacher

    • The Racial Justice Act isn't the solution to the problems with the death penalty, the solution is abolition of the death penalty. We're one of the only industrialized countries in the world where it still exists and it does nothing but waste money.

    • @ Cameron, How does the death penalty waste money? Allowing non-productive criminals that kill at will and then keeping them locked up using tax payer dollars to house, feed, clothe and "educate" them is the waste of money of which you speak.

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