Saunders: Sentences swayed by color

A column Tuesday gave an incorrect title for Paul "Skip" Stam. He is the state House majority leader.

"Man, I'll kill you and do seven years."

Hang around in the right neighborhoods, when the testosterone or cheap libations start flowing, and you're bound to hear some variation of that perversely prideful proclamation.

I first heard it standing outside the world-famous Quick's Grill in Rockingham late one summer night decades ago. Even though the two armed black men were facing off in a potentially life-and-death confrontation, one was still aware of the legal implications of killing another black man: A relatively paltry seven years of three hots and a cot at Central Prison if convicted.

There's a reason that block of East Washington Street was known as the "Be-Mo": you had to "be mo' careful" every time you ventured there lest you find yourself lying quietly in church come Sunday.

Most of us didn't need a Michigan State University study to tell us that the penalty for killing a black person is apt to be less severe than it would be for killing a white one. The MSU study notes that in North Carolina, when the death penalty was actively given, you were two-and-a-half times more likely to be sentenced to take the dirt nap, the hot squat, the dirty needle, if your victim was white than if he or she was black.

Coincidence? Pshawwww.

If two dudes squaring off in front of Quick's Grill know that, how come supposedly learned legislators don't?

My guess is that they do, but they are willfully undeterred by facts. For instance, House majority leader Paul "Skip" Stam, instrumental in overturning North Carolina's Racial Justice Act, skipped right over what most would consider the compelling statistical evidence and said, "We don't punish people because they're members of a group, we don't exonerate them because they're members of a group."

Ah, but Rep. Skippy. Evidence does suggest we punish them differently if their victims are members of a particular group.

Stam and Johnston County DA Susan Doyle, among others, make it sound as though supporting the Racial Justice Act is akin to letting convicted murderers skate right out of prison. Buffalo chips. Anyone who can prove his or her death sentence was the result of racial bias - so far as we know, no one has been able to prove that yet - would still do life behind bars. Which is no picnic.

Me? I used to support the death penalty - as a former cop reporter in the murder capital of the country years ago, I saw the devastation wrought upon survivors by murderers' depravity - but changed my stance when I saw how unevenly the death penalty was applied.

Fortunately for everyone except the owner of Nelson's Funeral Home right down the block, the wolfing between the two men that particular night years ago came to nothing: turns out one was scared and the other was glad of it.

Arguing on the Be-mo didn't always end peacefully, though, and there were enough homicides there to let you know the name was no joke.

Arguing, as Stam does, that race has no impact on how the death penalty is applied is a joke. But t'ain't funny.