News-Record.com

I won't address your objection to using statistical evidence, but it's worth noting at this time of budget stress that the death penalty is very expensive. Whatever one's moral opinion about capital punishment, studies show repeatedly that it's much cheaper to do away with it and replace it with life sentences. In other words, in public policy, even morals come with a cost. This debate about statistics is consistent with that. Without a death penalty to kick around, state legislators would have more time to work on the budget, the state health plan, etc.

Thanks, Andy. I'll fold that into the category of "plenty of problems with capital punishment."

Hey Doug, please stop using common sense by telling the ENTIRE story about the seemingly skewed, at least to the ignorant among us, stats concering who is on death row. You know how common sense confuses the left!

This is the same ongoing dishonesty of the left on almost every issue. Take how the fawning media reveled in telling us about O'Bummer's high approvasl ratings after his first 100 days, which seem like 100 years, but they failed to mention that each of the past 5 presidents had approval as high, and in a couple of cases, including Jimmy Carter (hmm, I wonder if....), higher than the Messiah!

Nothing is going to change with the thoroughly corrupted media, so thank God for the alternative media!

"Except, as the story continues, 62 percent of convicted murderers are black. So one could argue, using that measure, blacks are under-represented on death row."

I think one has to be careful here because some murders are eligible for the death penalty and others are not. One would have to be more specific here.

I'm not sure about the relevance of the approval rating, but according to ABC, Obama's at the hundred days mark was "the highest in 20 years," which means highest since Bush I.

Not so surprising about the approval rating: Obama received the highest % of the popular vote since GHW Bush in 1988.

Hey Andrew, you might want to take a look at the popularity of Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler in their early days. Now I'm not comparing O'Bummer with those murderers, but rather with his new pal, the beloved (elected) dictator, Hugo Chavez!

Andrew, apparently you didn't look into the internals of the ABC "poll."

How to produce high approval ratings for Obama
Steve McCann

Just read an AP report: the percentage of Americans that think the country is on the right track rose to 48% in March as compared to 40% in February. In light of the unemployment rising, the debacle in foreign affairs etc, I found it unlikely. So I looked into the details of the poll.

73% of the Democrats polled thought we were on the right track
17% of Independents
10% of Republicans

That made it even more suspicious as to how those numbers could result in a 48% overall right track vote.

So digging deeper, it turns out

36% of those polled were Democrats
18% Republican
26% Independent
18% None claimed

In the 2008 election the spread between Democrats and Republicans was 6.5 percentage points not 18 and independents made up 22% of the vote not 26%.

It appears that there have been similar distortions in the various polls measuring Obama's approval ratings.

Geez, now there's a big surprise! Every poll, to be legit, should be required to tell us who they polled

The ABC poll tracks fairly closely with numbers for stated party identification in the country right now. The legitimate polls do tell us who they poll. In fact you can find good analyses of polls and if they show a left or right tilt (that is their polls compared to voting results. Often it can happen that Democratic pollsters show a right tilt and Republican polls vice versa. I'm sure you were fussing about them pre-election too, but they ended being, when taken together largely correct. You had good analysts like Nate Silver who took the poll data and made a composite and got all but one state right (he called Indiana for McCain) and got every senate race correct. He's an admitted liberal but must more interested in getting a reputation for accuracy than having projections that show what he hopes will happen.

But regardless, Obama is right now a popular president and actually over the last month increasingly so (after the post inaugural decline). Sorry. And yes, polls people are more optimistic now than they were a couple months ago, if just because they feel like the decline is slowing. I'm not saying that makes sense but often such things don't. I don't think pointing to approval ratings (?) of Stalin or Hitler makes much sense. Those guys put their opposition in camps (at best), so don't get too eager to compare. And yes, Chavez was elected, and yes, he's not the best of guys, but he's no Hitler, Stalin or Mussolini. He doesn't have anything like their kind of power and doesn't pose any danger to other countries. He's more of a buffoon really. However, the point of all this escapes me. People aren't always going to vote the way you hope. I'm sorry we can't have a nice dictatorship for you.

Doug, your reasoning is faulty, not the bill's. You ask, "If a defendent commits a crime that's so heinous, with so many aggravating factors, that a fair-minded jury is convinced the death penalty is appropriate, then why should the jury be overruled by statistics generated by other cases? If the jury would recommend a death sentence whether the defendant were black, white or any other race, why should the defendant end up being spared because he's black if statistics suggest there is a disproportionate number of black defendants already on death row?" The answer, of course, is that juries, inflamed by any and every homicide, might well sentence to death persons who do not even commit first-degree murder, much less persons who do. You presume that those jurors would sentence to death anyone who would commit the same act, white or black. I am not so sanguine that your premise is correct. There have been myriad examples in NC, including in Guilford County, where an African-American who committed a homicide similar to one committed by a white person got a death sentence while the white defendant got a life sentence.
Another issue is prosecutors who select to try capitally people of color who would not be tried capitally if they were white.
Additionally, it is not correct that statistics will be used when there is no evidence of bias in a particular case. The problem arises because the US Supreme Court has held that in order to establish an equal protection violation, the claimant must show that race discrimination is intentional. Intentionality is so hard to prove that, under NC law, jurors in intentional homicide cases are told, "Intent is seldom provable by direct evidence. Therefore, you may infer intent from any of a number of other circumstances . . . " If we allow jurors to infer intent for, say, the crime of first-degree murder where the punishment might be death, then why should that same defendant be required to prove intent to establish race discrimination? As NC law says, "intent is seldom provable by direct evidence." This new law, the Racial Justice Act, would allow the defendant to establish race discrimination in the prosecution or implementation of the death penalty by means of statistical evidence which would be rebuttable. The law would merely allow statistics to create a rebuttable presumption of discrimination, shifting the burden to the prosecution to disprove what the statistics establish. This seems wholly reasonable to me.

Marshall,

Thanks for taking the time to offer such a detailed and thoughtful response.

I just don't happen to agree with your arguments.

First, regarding Guilford County.

It's been more than 50 years since someone convicted in Guilford County was executed:

http://www.doc.state.nc.us/dop/deathpenalty/5161.htm

Only three offenders currently on death row were convicted in Guilford County, the most recent in 2002:

http://www.doc.state.nc.us/DOP/deathpenalty/deathrow.htm

In the years since then, there have been quite a few black men convicted of murder and sentence to life in prison, The Racial Justice Act requires an examination of contemporary statistics.

The real problem, though, is this as expressed by your statement:

"The law would merely allow statistics to create a rebuttable presumption of discrimination, shifting the burden to the prosecution to disprove what the statistics establish."

Statistics may indeed create a "presumption" of discrimination if one assumes outcomes indicate the means by which the outcomes were reached. One cannot "rebut" the statistics if there is a "presumption" of discrimination based on those statistics.

This is especially problematic in view of the fact that the statistics have nothing to do with the case at hand. Each case must be judged according to its facts.

Can juries be "inflamed" by any homicide? They could, but in fact they aren't. The number of death-penalty verdicts in North Carolina has been steadily declining to a very low number. It takes a really heinous crime with underlying aggravating factors for a jury to make that extreme recommendation.

They aren't excluding white offenders: three of the last 10 placed on death row have been white. I hope those juries weren't considering the offenders' race when they weighed the evidence. That would be wrong today, just as it was wrong in past eras when justice intentionally was not colorblind.