North Carolina representatives have a serious but easy decision to make this week: will North Carolinians tolerate life and death decisions being made based upon a person's skin color?

Elliot Cramer recently opined the Racial Justice Act is unnecessary because capital defendants can present racial discrimination claims without it (CHN July 8). He correctly recognized the abysmal historical record but asserts the capital process today has reversed its racist past. While we would all like to believe both of these premises, they are untrue. Since the death penalty was reinstated in North Carolina in 1977, race has and continues to infect the capital process.

There are many decisions made by prosecutors which determine when a defendant is given the death penalty. Isaac Unah, a well-respected social scientist at UNC, and John C. Boger, now dean of the UNC School of Law, conducted a seminal study in North Carolina which showed the odds were 3.5 times higher that the death penalty would be imposed when the victim is white than when the victim is not white. Recently, Dr. Unah found, in Durham County, the odds of a prosecutor seeking the death penalty where the victim was white and the defendant was black were over five times greater than the odds of the prosecutor seeking it when both the victim and defendant were black. This disparity is pervasive throughout our state, but we should not tolerate it.

Prosecutors also play a role in deciding which jurors are selected to make life or death decisions. Jurors of all races have a constitutional right to not be excluded from jury selection based upon their race. However, we have seen prosecutors excluding African-American jurors at a much higher rate than other races. In fact 35 people in North Carolina have been sent to death row by all-white juries since 1977. In a state that has a 22 percent African-American population it should be rare to find an all-white jury if the jury selection process is fair and any effort is made to have a diverse jury of one's peers.

While the American jury system is the greatest in the world, it is still fallible and not insulated from racism. One of our most fundamental guarantees is that people accused of a crime must receive a fair trial regardless of their race. Kenneth Rouse is an African-American who was sentenced to death in Randolph County by an all-white jury that had a juror who routinely referred to African-Americans as "ns" and stated that "bigotry" was influential in his decision to vote for death. The vast majority of jurors certainly don't hold such views, but racism clearly played a role in this case. Mr. Rouse remains on death row today. The Racial Justice Act can end this discrimination.

Since 1977, eight people have been released from North Carolina's death row because they were innocent. In the last two years alone, three African-Americans were exonerated and released after spending a total of 41 years on death row. Nationwide, 134 people have been exonerated and half of them are African-American. Undoubtedly, racial bias played a part in some of these innocent people being stripped of their liberty and incarcerated without cause. How many more innocent people remain on death row? We have a sordid history of prosecutorial misconduct including prosecutors who hide favorable evidence, who consistently excuse African-Americans from juries, and who make life or death decisions based upon race; one even passed out noose lapel pins in celebration of death verdicts. While North Carolina is blessed with many fine prosecutors who uphold the law and make race-neutral decisions, the Racial Justice Act will allow us to ferret out those cases where race tainted the process. It makes me wonder, why would anyone oppose the Racial Justice Act?

Jay Ferguson is an attorney in Durham.