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RALEIGH
The fate of the Racial Justice Act was thrown into uncertainty Wednesday night when the possibility of a last-minute compromise postponed an imminent veto override vote in the House of Representatives.
Earlier in a day of supercharged emotions and political tug-of-war, the Senate overrode the veto of Senate Bill 9 that would have repealed parts of the act by a vote of 31-19, as expected. House Republicans accused Gov. Bev Perdue of intentionally delaying the appointment of a replacement member to a vacant seat, as they scrambled to line up enough votes for a three-fifths majority to override.
But when it came time to debate the bill on the House floor, it was instead sent to a standing committee. It was then announced that a new committee had been formed - the House Select Committee on Racial Discrimination in Capital Cases - and 10 members appointed to it.
Legislators from both chambers remained in session until late Wednesday night, so it wasn't known by mid-evening what the outcome of the developments would be - nor whether other veto overrides might come up. Republicans have been holding onto several vetoed bills they would like to see overridden.
Republicans had been wooing five conservative Democrats to vote for the SB9 override. But some of those five members apparently decided that a compromise solution, rather than allowing SB9 to perish in a failed override attempt, could be found.
One of those conservatives, Rep. William Brisson, a Democrat representing Bladen and Cumberland counties, said he thought it would be a long-term task so that differences might be worked out and taken up again in the short session in May. "It's not a quick fix," he said.
The Racial Justice Act, which was passed in 2009, allows death-row inmates to use the results of statistical studies showing racial bias statewide and locally to try to have their sentences converted to life in prison without parole. Debates over the legislation were heated during last year's session with votes following party lines. So Wednesday's compromise on the fly took observers by surprise, including representatives of the N.C. Conference of District Attorneys, which has been pushing for SB9. House Minority Leader Paul "Skip" Stam ushered them into his office to explain in private what was in the works.
Using a new committee to come up with a compromise could defuse some of the rhetoric that has accompanied the issue, as prosecutors and Republican legislators had been accused of racism for opposing the Racial Justice Act.
House Democrats were fuming at the late twist, and called a brief news conference to complain.
"To move forward beyond where we are right now ... is a misuse and abuse of the legislative process," said House Minority Leader Joe Hackney, a Chapel Hill Democrat.
"They have lied to us all the way up and down," said Micky Michaux, a Durham Democrat, said of the GOP leadership.
Earlier Wednesday, needing every vote they could muster, the GOP escalated what they portrayed as a standoff with Perdue over the appointment of a replacement member to a vacant House seat.
House Speaker Thom Tillis said lawmakers would stay in session until the appointment was made, even if it meant returning next week to hold the override vote. Tillis accused Perdue of intentionally delaying the appointment, costing taxpayers $50,000 for every day they had to be in session.
Tillis said the vote could be important enough to determine whether the override would succeed.
The loss of Guice
The vacancy that suddenly became so important was created when Rep. David Guice, a Republican representing Henderson, Polk and Transylvania counties, was given a new job in the new state Department of Public Safety, effective Sunday. An executive committee of Republicans in that district chose former state representative Trudi Walend on Monday night to serve the rest of Guice's term.
That made a tight squeeze for Walend to be seated in time to vote on the veto override. The governor has no choice but to approve the executive committee's choice of a replacement, but she has seven days in which to do it.
Tillis said Perdue's office was informed of the selection Monday night, and received official paperwork before Tuesday morning. When Perdue took no action on Tuesday, Tillis began planning for a confrontation. Early Wednesday afternoon, Tillis and most of the GOP Republican delegation in the House, including Walend, held a news conference to lambast the governor.
Tillis said Perdue's inaction was depriving 75,000 residents of those mountain counties of representation.
"The citizens of Rep. Walend's district deserve to participate in the same process as everybody else," he said. "... The governor has joked about suspending elections before, but these citizens had an election on Monday and they want their result appointed. ... I think it's irresponsible and it's playing politics."
But the standoff dissolved shortly after the news conference when the governor's office announced she had signed the appointment once Walend had filed a legally required economic-interest statement in the afternoon. State law requires the form be filed prior to appointing a new legislator.
A few minutes after 7 p.m. Wednesday, Walend was sworn into office on the House floor.
In the Senate
A couple of hours before her swearing in, the state Senate easily nullified Perdue's veto with a party-line vote.
Sen. Don East, a Pilot Mountain Republican, said he didn't want to speak on the legislation but felt compelled. He told a long, personal story about his father, a law enforcement officer who was shot and killed. "I'm telling you, there are mean people in this world," he said.
But Democratic Senate leader Martin Nesbitt said the court system is designed to handle those types of people. He said the Racial Justice Act is needed to help maintain the court's integrity. "We cannot let our system of justice that handles cases every day (would) fall into a situation where there is a distrust of its fairness," he said.
The hour-long debate rehashed much of the same talking points that clouded the bill's passage in December.
Sen. Thom Goolsby, a Wilmington criminal defense lawyer, revived the controversial suggestion that convicted murderers on death row would use the Racial Justice Act to walk free - an accusation that numerous legal scholars have rejected.
"Everyone in this legislature knows this is a back-door attempt to get rid of the death penalty in North Carolina," asserted Goolsby, a Republican.
Goolsby also blasted N.C. Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat, for remaining silent of the issue.
"Why is he not saying anything about this? That is a deep concern to me as lawyer," he said.
Cooper's office told Goolsby that the attorney general would not pass judgment on the Racial Justice Act because it may litigate cases involving the law. Goolsby suggested it was hypocritical given Cooper's comments on other legislation with legal ramifications, notably a bill involving the federal health care law.
Sen. Floyd McKissick of Durham presented the Democrats case, saying lawmakers need to keep the Racial Justice Act intact to preserve a bias-free system. "We want to know that a jury is really a jury of our peers," he said.
