It doesn’t matter one iota how guilty you are. You could have robbed your victim, tortured her for three days, stabbed her 83 times, recorded the whole thing and mailed your signed confession along with the video tape to the District Attorney. No biggie. It means nothing. Since those who kill white victims are more likely to get the death penalty in North Carolina, if you can prove that your victim was white, you could go free! And who kills white victims the most often? White killers!!!! But even if you aren’t white, or your victim wasn’t, you can still use stats to prove you were discriminated again. (Here’s more on how this legislation, which is so radical they couldn’t pass it in California, would work to free murderers or get them out of the death penalty.)
In the wacky brain of our governor — who has attracted national attention for being, um, off, not politically off, but off in general — this probably makes sense. The legislation said that all killers removed from the state’s death row — 156 out of 158 have filed petitions saying we can’t execute them due to the racial justice act — would have their sentences commuted to life.
But there’s a catch, as Johnston County District Attorney Susan I. Doyle, President of the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys, points out in an alarming letter to state legislators. Before 1994, life meant you are eligible for parole after 20 years.
Proponents of RJA guarantee that none of these inmates will go free if they prevail on a claim. There is no guarantee. Inmates sentenced before October 1994 under Fair Sentencing, whose sentences were commuted to life in prison can be considered for parole after 20 years. There are at least 27 such inmates currently on death row. This means the courts could indeed release a number of these heinous offenders, whose victims’ were promised they would never be released to threaten or re-offend. This was not the intent of RJA.
And don’t think the states’s parole commission won’t release them. Odds are they will. The wacko liberal parole commission regularly releases these pre-1994 murderers. In any give year, five to 10 return to Mecklenburg area alone, no matter how heinous their crimes. We let about 30 of these suckers go statewide a year, including child murderers and cop killers, many of them with just two decades in prison under their belts.
But that is no longer good enough for the radical liberal goof jobs who ran the legislature for years and quietly and deliberately engineered the system to release the state’s killers back into society (see the link in the last paragraph for how they did this.) They can’t help themselves. They won’t be happy until they release the worst of the worst.
This doesn’t have to happen. If voters fully understood what was going on here, they’d freak.The GOP must use their control of the legislature to overturn the Racial Justice Act and make sure that voters understand the full horror of the bill that Perdue signed. Even famed Charlotte serial killer Henry Louis Wallace, who bragged about his crimes — and that he committed more he was never busted for — could use this legislation to get out of the death penalty.
Here is the rest of the letter Doyle wrote, detailing the full horrors of Perdue and the Democrat’s attack on the justice system on behalf of the state’s most brutal killers. I can’t imagine what this is putting their victims’ families through. But who the heck cares about them:
Dear Senator Berger:
On behalf of North Carolina’s 44 elected District Attorneys, I am asking for your assistance in correcting poorly constructed legislation that is having unintended and deleterious consequences. The Racial Justice Act (RJA), passed in 2009, purports to protect murderers from racial bias. Let me assure you, it does not. This act simply allows complex statistical maneuvering to overrule a jury’s decision, ignore the heinous acts of a murderer and ultimately put an end to the death penalty in our state. I am asking that you consider the information provided in this letter and support an amendment to RJA as soon as possible.
Since this bill passed, concerns expressed, by District Attorneys, yet disregarded, during the initial legislative debate have become reality. And now, if action is not taken quickly the criminal justice system will be saddled with litigation that will crush an already under-funded and overburdened system. Consider the impact:
(1) Death row inmates, regardless of race, have taken advantage of RJA. Of the 158 inmates on death row, 156 have filed motions. Fifty-seven of these inmates are white, with many of their victims being white and many of the juries consisting of mostly white jurors. Yet, by manipulating statistics, they will prevail. While black defendants are claiming racial bias by the system, white defendants are claiming reverse bias as a result of the system’s efforts to eliminate discrimination against black defendants. This was not the intent of RJA.
(2) The cost of this act is proving to be prohibitive and the burden is crippling our criminal justice system. Almost every district in our state is facing at least one of these motions, while many are burdened with multiple motions. District Attorneys are being forced to devote a ridiculous amount of time and resources to these convicted murderers’ cases. In one pending motion, conservative estimates for just copying prosecution discovery range from $35,000 to $50,000. While District Attorneys bear the responsibility of responding to RJA, we have received no additional resources. That means there are fewer resources to prosecute murderers, rapists and drug traffickers whose cases are now pending and who are sitting in jail. This was not the intent of RJA.
(3) The act creates a quagmire of litigation that requires the accumulation and distribution of over 20 years of homicide case files, easily numbering in the thousands. Thus far, the judge in one district litigating RJA has set a schedule for the discovery process that extends for 2 years before the actual hearing is ever reached. Additionally, statistical experts, being paid exorbitant fees, are being brought in from across the country to testify on a variety of statistical data, none of which relate to the convicted murderers’ actions. This was not the intent of RJA.
(4) Proponents of RJA guarantee that none of these inmates will go free if they prevail on a claim. There is no guarantee. Inmates sentenced before October 1994 under Fair Sentencing, whose sentences were commuted to life in prison can be considered for parole after 20 years. There are at least 27 such inmates currently on death row. This means the courts could indeed release a number of these heinous offenders, whose victims’ were promised they would never be released to threaten or re-offend. This was not the intent of RJA.
Do not allow North Carolina to continue this charade on its citizens, your constituents, with regards to the death penalty. In its current state, with RJA in place, we truly do not have a death penalty. District Attorneys are obligated by law to pursue litigation and defend the decisions of the judges and juries in our state. However, there is little we can do to prevent RJA from draining the scarce resources of our criminal justice system and possibly vacating death row.
I implore you to reconsider this Act. At a time in our state when resources are scarce, it seems these resources should be devoted to more worthy endeavors like our children, schools or healthcare systems. Senate Bill 9 – No Discriminatory Purpose in the Death Penalty seeks to amend the RJA and bring it in line with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the use of statistics in death penalty cases. Nothing about RJA fulfills the stated intent of the act. I challenge you see RJA for what it really is, not a search to eliminate racial bias, but a backdoor deal to end the death penalty in North Carolina.
Sincerely,
Susan I. Doyle
District Attorney, Johnston County
President, North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys.
