Death Penalty

Death Penalty

Rep. Rick Glazier and others called on leaders across the country Wednesday to scrutinize the death penalty and its application to help prevent executing innocent inmates. Glazier, D-Cumberland, spoke in the legislative auditorium as part of a panel that included legal scholars, a filmmaker, a minister and a Chicago Tribune investigative journalist. The discussion stemmed from the national premiere of a documentary, "At the Death House Door." The film, co-directed by Peter Gilbert and Steve James, is set in Texas and explores the effects of the death penalty on condemned inmates and a death row chaplain who was charged with comforting them before the execution. Two themes quickly emerged during the discussion: the effect of race on criminal cases and wrongful convictions. Glazier wore a button encouraging people to "Support the Racial Justice Act." A co-sponsor for that legislation, he said that race cannot be ignored as factor in convictions. "There is too much anecdotal an! d statistical evidence to say that race doesn't play a role, because it does," he said.

The Racial Justice Act would allow condemned inmates to use statistics to try to prove their race was the reason prosecutors sought the death penalty against them. The bill was passed last year by the House and is waiting on consideration by the Senate. A few legislators attended the discussion, including two more of the bill's primary sponsors -- Rep. Earline Parmon and Rep. Larry Womble, both Forsyth Democrats. Sen. Daniel Clodfelter, D-Mecklenburg, and representatives from anti-death penalty groups also attended the meeting. In North Carolina, executions remain on hold despite a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that upheld Kentucky's lethal injection method. North Carolina's method is similar, using the three-drug combination. The first renders the inmate unconscious, the second paralyzes all muscles except the heart and the third stops the heart.

(Titan Barksdale, THE NEWS & OBSERVER, 5/15/08).