A Senate judiciary committee this evening voted to go along with the House version of the bill repealing the Racial Justice Act, sending the legislation to the full Senate for consideration this evening.

If approved by the Senate, the bill would go directly to the governor for her signature. There is no word from Gov. Bev Perdue's office tonight on whether she would sign or veto.

The vote followed a public hearing in which impassioned pleas were made on both sides of the issue from the families of murder victims and from death penalty opponents.

The hearing was the first public discussion the Senate has had on the legislation, SB9. The House approved the bill in June, and it has been tucked away in the Senate committee ever since.

Meanwhile, the state's district attorneys in recent weeks stepped up the campaign that they have been waging against the two-year-old Racial Justice Act all year. That strategy continued earlier today when 16 prosecutors and several families of murder victims held a news conference in the statehouse to put a human face on the debate.

Many of those same people also spoke at the Senate hearing this afternoon. But senators on the judciary committee talked law when it came time to decide the matter.

The Racial Justice Act allows death-row inmates to petition judges to commute their sentences to life in prison without parole if they can show racial bias through statistical evidence. All but three of the 157 people currently on death row have sought hearings under the new law.

Rep. Paul Stam, an Apex Republican who explained the bill to the committee, said inmates could use statistics unrelated to their case. Stam said that violated a basic principle: "Justice is personal, it's not collective."

Sen. Dan Clodfelter, a Democrat from Mecklenburg County, suggested limiting the use of statistics strictly to those related to the prosecutorial district where the crime occurred. Sen. Josh Stein, a Raleigh Democrat, said the Racial Justice Act allows prosecutors to rebut any statistics that a convict might use.

But Sen. Bob Rucho, a Mecklenburg County Republican, said it was legislators' responsibility to respond to problems the district attorneys have with the law and fix it. He said judges now know that they're being watched for evidence of bias.

The Senate is on a dinner break until 6:30 p.m.