No justice at all in Bev’s veto

 

 

Once again, Ms. Perdue-Eaves is standing in the way of common sense in Raleigh.   Our Boss Lady (til 2012) vetoed the legislature’s repeal of the 2009 Racial Justice Act. The original 2009 legislation, rammed through by a Democrat majority on Jones Street, was nothing more than a sop to  the trial lawyers and the race-baiting agitators / community organizers — two key groups within the state Democrat political machine. The bill, which allows death sentences to be overturned if evidence of “racial bias” can be found in the courtroom deliberations, was a gift from attorneys serving in the legislature to their friends and colleagues in bar associations across the state.

A friend of mine who used to serve in the state House told me it is quite typical for elected members, who happen to be attorneys, to spend a good chunk of the business day  in the hallway outside the House chamber running their law practices via cell phone.  Okay.  They are taking taxpayer funds as a salary for being there AND AT THE SAME TIME lawyering via cell phone and collecting those $300 to $400 hourly fees.   How is that legal?  How is that fair to the taxpayers, for them to be pulling in big legal fees while foisting horrible laws on the rest of us?  How about bagging the Racial Justice Act and giving us a Taxpayers’ Justice Act? 

Republican leaders hit the nail on the head with their post-veto comments to WRAL:

“As much as Gov. Perdue claims to support the death penalty, she knows the Racial Justice Act and her veto are back-door bans on capital punishment,” said Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger (R-Rockingham).

“This is the same double-speak we’ve heard all year from a politician focused more on pandering to the left wing of her party than governing responsibly. Gov. Perdue has a moral duty to uphold public safety for the people of North Carolina and preserve justice for the families of victims murdered in the most heinous crimes – and she has failed. The Senate will override her veto to ensure hardened criminals cannot be released,” Berger said in a statement.

“I am disappointed in yet another decision by Governor Perdue to put politics ahead of principle,” said House Speaker Thom Tillis in a statement. “By vetoing this bill, the Governor has turned her back on the families of victims across this state and a vast majority of prosecutors who need every available resource to crack down on violent criminals.”

It was mighty appropriate that Ms. Perdue-Eaves  issued her veto while the  trial of one of the dirtbags who murdered former UNC student body president Eve Carson was going on in Orange County:

Prosecutors contend Lovette and Atwater rushed Carson outside her home on March 5, 2008, at about 3:40 a.m. They forced Carson into the backseat of her Toyota Highlander, prosecutors argue, then drove her to ATMs in Chapel Hill and Durham and forced the withdrawal of hundreds of dollars from her account.In the days after the shooting, prosecutors contend the defendant broke up the handgun used in the homicide and then disposed of it in three places in Durham.Then almost a week later, when Atwater was being arrested, prosecutors argue Lovette described his actions in great detail to a friend who later testified during the trial.Carson was praying in the back seat of her Toyota Highlander as her abductors withdrew money from an ATM shortly before her death.

Assistant District Attorney James Rainsford slowed down footage from a surveillance camera to point that out as closing arguments begin in the trial of Laurence Alvin Lovette Jr.The grainy image shows the paper “Be True” bracelet that police found wrapped around Carson’s wrist the day she was found shot to death in a Chapel Hill neighborhood about a mile from her home.That arm is bent in prayer.Rainsford, who was the first to offer closing arguments, walked jurors back through evidence presented during the seven days of testimony in Orange County Superior Court.“This case is such a tragedy,” Rainsford said. “What the defendant did to Eve Carson was greedy, miserable and cruel. It was useless, and that’s what murder is.”

“The evidence presented in this case allows us to literally look back in time to March 5, 2008 and look as these tragic events unfolded,” Rainford said.”The evidence that’s been provided in this case allows us to literally look back in time and watch this tragic event, as it unfolds,” Rainsford added.Rainsford started with video images from a security camera at a sorority house about a block from the Friendly Lane home where Carson lived with three other students.The footage shows two darkly clad males walking out from behind a trash bin in the direction of the Carson house.Then he showed images from an ATM, where Carson’s bank card was used at 3:55 a.m.Rainsford argued that four witnesses testified during the past week and a half that Lovette was the person pictured in the driver’s seat of Carson’s Highlander.Carson, who was 22 at the time of her death, was finishing up her final weeks as student body president.“Eve Carson had the power to persuade,” Rainsford said.”When she asked the defendant to pray with her, he shot her. She used her power of persuasion and that’s what happened.”Rainsford described the defendant as “miserable, greedy and cruel, that’s the face of murder.”

[..]

Carson was found dead on March 5, 2008, shortly before dawn at the intersection of Hillcrest Circle and Hillcrest Drive, a dark, wooded area about a mile from her home and the UNC-CH campus.She had been shot by a handgun in the buttocks, arm, shoulder and cheek. Prosecutors contend Lovette fired those shots, then Atwater fired the final blast to her right temple from a sawed-off shotgun that, according to a medical examiner report, was immediately fatal.The medical examiner who performed the autopsy reported that Carson would have been mobile and able to talk after the first four shots and might have survived had she received immediate help.  [ …]

In earlier testimony, it was revealed that the two suspects thought it was a neat idea to shoot their robbery victims  — so they could not later finger them to police.  Wow.  Dirtbags like these two are who the death penalty was made for.

Making a defense attorney’s job easier — making it harder to sentence a murderer to death — making the state subsidize a bloodthirsty killer’s miserable existence — are all  injustices to crime victims and every other innocent North Carolinian.

It’s disgusting that Ms. Perdue-Eaves has decided to play politics with this.  

Hopefully, Mr. McCrory will administer to her an electoral beating in 2012 akin to the  on-court beating UNC’s basketball team delivered to Nicholls State earlier tonight.