It's the Law

Hotep, 

USA Today reported in its December 11, 2k12 edition that North Carolina is prepared to impede the efforts of prosecutors seeking the death penalty.  This report doesn’t scream that state lawmakers plan to abolish the death penalty.  However, it is a whisper of recognition regarding the reprehensible practices of the state’s crime lab – along with the prosecutors using race as a means of gaining an advantage in capital cases – is reason to recalibrate the partisan scales of justice.  Feel me?

Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1977, North Carolina has issued at least one death sentence per year.  Well, as of December 14, 2012, that tradition has met a moral road block.  With no more cases on the 2k12 docket, its obvious juries are no longer content with the prosecutorial onslaughts of a defendant’s character, as a method of persuasion, to win a death penalty conviction.  Therefore, the row had no new faces in 2k12.  Our numbers increased in spiritual growth, only, while our population steadily lessens without the usage of the state’s death chamber.  Ya heard?

With this being the case, irony was definitely in the air on Thursday, December 13, 2k12.  Judge Gregory Weeks vacated the death sentences of Quintel Augustine, Tilman Golphin and Christine Walters.  You do remember Judge Weeks, right?  He’s the Senior Resident Superior Court Judge in Cumberland County, who broke the mold of the Racial Justice Act, with the case of Marcus Reymond Robinson back in 4/20/12 (The Concrete Perspective, 5/29/12).

New life outside of today’s norm has been a revelation.  I mean, the days of systematically excluding blacks from juries, and taking a capital dump on indigent defendants are numbered.  For far too long, capital punishment in the state of North Carolina was believed to be a deterrent for crime.  Check the stats; without a single new face in 2k12, the crime rate continues to decrease in N.C.  Word is bond!

As the historical year drew to an end, I wanted to think this change could help us become better people.  Then I’m reminded of the two angry Caucasian males who vowed to take the law into their own hands, since the state’s promise to execute Tilmon Golphin didn’t pan out.  A furor that was exhibited before the cameras of the local news media – and chronicled for generations to come.  SMH.

OAN, my heart goes out to the families of the angelic souls – recently departed – from Newtown, Connecticut.  Sandy Hook Elementary School is now a historical landmark, by the hands of violence.  The pain of losing those beautiful babies to such a horrendous act will forever be a cataclysm within our hearts.  But, I can only hope that the preadolescent survivors evolve into a generation that echoes the sentiments of our 44^th president – not the injurious thoughts/words displayed in a Cumberland County Court room last December.  Na mean?

Nothing we do or say will change who’s deceased and who’s left behind as a survivor.  Taking the law into your own hands leaves another deceased and more survivors left to mourn.  You can be sure the deplorable practices of the state will be ready and willing to accommodate.  It’s the law.

“The ugly truth of race discrimination revealed by defendant’s evidence is the 1^st step in creating a system of justice that is free from the pernicious influence of race.”

- Judge Gregory Weeks, 12/13/12

Keep it 100,

MannofStat

Copyright © 2013 by Leroy Elwood Mann