Democrats and liberal activists are gearing up to block a Republican-sponsored bill in the N.C. legislature that would repeal the N.C. Racial Justice Act.

N.C. Rep. Rodney Moore

The act, signed into law by Gov. Bev. Perdue in 2009, allows defendants to offer statistics to show that race played a key factor in putting a disproportionate number of people from a racial group on death row or on trial for their lives. If a judge agrees, a death sentence could be reduced to life in prison.

Republicans, backed by state prosecutors, have vowed to repeal the law, arguing that it is vague. Some point to white death row inmates who have used the law to try to overturn sentences.

A Senate bill that would repeal the act is scheduled for debate on the House floor on Monday, June 20.

Throughout the state, Democrats and liberal groups, including the NAACP, are working to bring attention to the pending vote.

On Friday in Charlotte, groups opposed to repeal will screen the film “At the Death House Door," a 2008 documentary film about Carroll Pickett, who served as the death house chaplain to the infamous "Walls" prison unit in Huntsville, Texas. Pickett presided over 95 executions in his 15-year career, including the first by lethal injection. He kept his feelings about his work from his family, instead audio taping an account of each one. Initially pro-execution, he became an anti-death penalty activist.

The film will be shown at 6 p.m. at Shiloh Institutional Baptist Church, 2400 Greenland Avenue. A panel discussion will follow with Darryl Hunt, who spent nearly 19 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

State Rep. Rodney Moore, a Mecklenburg Democrat, said defending the Racial Justice Act is a “righteous cause.”

“We must come together as one strong voice to keep this law on the books,” he said in a statement.

The film screening is sponsored by Moore; Democracy North Carolina; Justice Policy Center; Charlotte Mecklenburg NAACP; the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice; Shiloh Institutional Baptist Church; Charlotte Health Care Coalition; Charlotte Community Justice Coalition; and the Ferguson, Stein, Chambers, Gresham & Sumter law firm.

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