North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act is dead

Governor Pat McCrory signed a bill Wednesday that repealed North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act, landmark legislation that allowed death row inmates to appeal their death sentences based on evidence of racial bias during their trials.

The Racial Justice Act (RJA) was created in response to studies that showed North Carolina juries are two-and-a-half times more likely to sentence a defendant to death if the victim or one of the victims is white. Under the 2009 law, a death-row inmate who can prove racism played a role in his trial can have his sentence commuted to life in prison. After the law was passed, nearly every N.C. inmate sentenced to death appealed his sentence.

Opponents of the RJA argued that the law allows every individual sentenced to death to file an appeal, even if the convicted person is white.

No one has been executed in North Carolina since 2007, when an array of legal rulings yielded an unofficial moratorium on the death penalty. Supporters of the Racial Justice Act say that the repeal of the legislation will help to end that moratorium.

Click here for a history of the RJA and court cases influenced by the Act.