Jeff previously posted news items about North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act (RJA), including one here updating readers on the bill’s path to law, and one here about actual RJA filings. I was recently told by the N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts that there now are at least 204 filed RJA motions. Although most of those motions have been filed as post-conviction motions for appropriate relief (MARs) by death row inmates, a number have been filed in pending capital cases (the RJA allows for filing at the Rule 24 hearing or post-conviction as a MAR). Given the number of filings and the novelty of the act itself, I am fielding a fair number of questions about RJA procedure (discovery, nature of the hearings, etc.), and questions of statutory interpretation. In this post I’ll focus on the act’s core provisions and highlight three significant interpretation issues relating to those provisions. The RJA provides that “[n]o person shall be subject to or given a sentence of death or shall be executed pursuant to any judgment that was sought or obtained on the basis of race.” G.S. 15A-2010. It further provides: “[a] finding that race was the basis of the decision to seek or impose a death sentence may be established if the court finds that race was a significant factor in decisions to seek or impose the sentence of death in the county, the prosecutorial district, the judicial division, or the State at the time the death sentence was sought or imposed.” G.S. [...]
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