Judge Greg Weeks recently made this ruling in North Carolina:
A condemned killer’s trial was so tainted by the racially influenced decisions of prosecutors that he should be removed from death row and serve a life sentence, a judge ruled Friday in a precedent-setting North Carolina decision.
Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks’ decision in the case of Marcus Robinson comes in the first test of a 2009 state law that allows death row prisoners and capital murder defendants to challenge their sentences or prosecutors’ decisions with statistics and other evidence beyond documents or witness testimony…
Race played a “persistent, pervasive and distorting role” in jury selection and couldn’t be explained other than that “prosecutors have intentionally discriminated” against Robinson and other capital defendants statewide, Weeks said. Prosecutors eliminated black jurors more than twice as often as white jurors, according to a study by two Michigan State University law professors Weeks said he found highly reliable.
Doesn’t this judge listen to Rush or watch FOX Noise? If there’s anything we’ve learned over the past decade it’s that racism does not exist. Well. Okay, that’s not entirely true. It certainly exists. It’s just that there isn’t a single example of it. Anywhere. Ever. By claiming otherwise, Judge Weeks is clearly an activist. And probably a socialist. Maybe gay. Someone needs to call for an investigation.
Filed under: Politics and Social | Tagged: Death penalty, Judge Greg Weeks, Marcus Robinson, North Carolina, Racial Justice Act |
For the Sake of Science 
1.) The murderer claimed he wanted to “do” a white boy.
2.) Later that day black guy killed a white kid.
3.) Society decides this piece of scum should live because executing him would be “racist”.
Bad law, bad judgement…this murdering piece of garbage should be executed.
And perhaps a jury picked by a non-racist prosecutor would put less emphasis on race than you have, James.
Well, how can I not put emphasis on race when the issue *IS* by definition race? Is it not?
Look, Michael, this guy killed a kid. Cold blood. Dead. A jury found him guilty and found his crime worthy of the death penalty. After many years a judge decided to lessen the sentence based purely on the number of black people on the jury. I find that ridiculous.
First of all, the defense has equal say in jury selection. Second, there’s no evidence that this jury acted in a racist fashion. The only “evidence” that the jury was racist is because it had white people on it.
In this specific case, how did this decision enhance justice?
Notice how you went from saying race is the issue to boiling things down to “this guy killed a kid”. Murder is the issue.
The judge did not correct the sentence based purely on the number of black people on the jury. He looked at the fact that the prosecutors systematically eliminated jurors on the basis of race. Frankly, I’m surprised Robinson doesn’t get a whole new case – prosecutors aren’t supposed to pick a jury based upon its biases.
The defense can’t demand the prosecutor choose black people. It’s a one-way street in that regard.
A man was convicted not by an unbiased jury of his peers, but by a specific set of people who were systematically chosen due to their higher likelihood to dislike the defendant based upon the color of his skin. You can say the judge only looked at who incidentally happened to be on the jury, but the fact is there is no way a dozen people would have been chosen the way there were under a fair system.