Fitzsimon File

The death penalty in North Carolina remains caught in a quagmire of court cases and administrative law decisions, and now the U.S. Supreme Court is planning to hear a case on the constitutionality of the lethal injection procedure used by many states, including North Carolina.  Look for am upcoming weekly briefing from Rob Schofield to sort out all the issues.

One thing missing from much of the public discussion is all the problems that have been recently identified in the state’s criminal justice system, the system that is supposed to be able to fairly decide who lives and dies.  Virtually every week brings another story of questionable justice or no justice at all.

This week, the Attorney General’s office stepped in to appoint a special prosecutor in a murder case against a Wilson man after his family and the NAACP raised serious questions about his guilt. 

A Goldsboro man was recently freed after spending 18 years in prison for a rape he did not commit. A man remains committed to Dorothea Dix Hospital for his role in a murder that media accounts have raised serious questions about. And of course, there’s Mike Nifong.

And those are the cases we know about because they receive publicity. No one doubts that there are many more. And this is the system that we trust to make the right decision every time in administering the sentence of death, which when carried out is impossible to undo.

Even in the unlikely event that the courts and politicians untangle the current lethal injection controversy, it is hard to imagine how anyone could support executions resuming in North Carolina until some faith is restored in our criminal justice system.

The wisest move would be to institute a formal moratorium on executions and finally conduct an in-depth look at the death penalty system from top to bottom to see if the problems can be fixed.

 

Here we go again with soundbite fantasy versus budget reality. Rep. Trudy Walend is the latest lawmaker guilty of succumbing to the siren call of a pithy quote, even if it is inaccurate.

The Hendersonville Times-News reports that Walend recently appeared with Rep. Carolyn Justus before a local Republican Men’s Club to talk about this year’s legislative session.

Walend told the crowd that the General Assembly “spent every bit of (the surplus) in the budget,” echoing a talking point that you will hear a lot in the coming year. The problem is that it is simply not true and either Walend knows it and doesn’t care or wasn’t paying attention when the House was debating the budget this summer.

The budget uses $90 million to cut taxes on wealthy, puts $175 million in the state’s Rainy Day Fund and another $145 million into an account for future repairs and renovations to state buildings. Not to mention the $270 million left on the table, unappropriated.

Complaining about spending and clamoring for more tax cuts, however misguided, are understandable positions from self-proclaimed conservative legislators and that is a philosophical debate that ought to be part of partisan campaigns.

But no one can legitimately claim that this year’s budget spends every dime, even though it sounds better than just criticizing the level of spending.  The problem is that the more the spent-every-dime mantra is repeated, the more people believe it and the more it distorts the real debate.

Not to mention that it makes you wonder if some lawmakers actually understand why they are voting for or against something.

 

The Times-News also included a cryptic reference by Rep. Justus to some mysterious Raleigh plot that could threaten civilization as we know it. The paper quotes Justus telling the group that there are a lot of things that go on in Raleigh that “the public is not aware of…and that they demonstrate the problems of the Democratic leadership.”

Maybe she’ll tell us about the secret rituals at some point. Stay tuned.

 

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This entry was posted on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Fitzsimon File. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.