North Carolina Democratic Gov. Bev Perdue signed into law Thursday the state’s Racial Justice Act into law, making North Carolina the second state to allow statistical data on race to be used when determining whether or not to put someone to death. Under the law, nobody can be executed because a judgment was sought or obtained on the basis of race, News 14 in Raleigh reports. “While our criminal justice system will continue to have the death penalty, racial disparities have no place, no place whatsoever, in North Carolina’s criminal justice system,” said Perdue, who actually supports the death penalty. Over the past three years, three Black death-row inmates have been exonerated and released from prison. It’s the type of mistakes that Black leaders, prisoner-advocates and anti-death-penalty activists say the new law could help prevent. “By passing the Racial Justice Act, we have infused antibody treatment into a system that is diseased with the infection of racism,” the Rev. Dr. William Barber, president of the N.C. NAACP, said. But not every body is pleased with the new law. Some prosecutors have argued that it will make it much tougher to put to death deserving criminals in North Carolina.

TAGS: death penalty, executions, Gov. Bev Perdue, north carolina

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