Sarah Bufkin, a former intern for ThinkProgress, filed this report from Fayetteville, North Carolina

In 2009, North Carolina enacted the Racial Justice Act, which enables death row inmates to reduce their sentence to life in prison without parole if they can demonstrate that race played a substantive factor in “decisions to seek or impose the sentence of death in the county, the prosecutorial district, the judicial division, or the State at the time the death sentence was sought or imposed.” Thus, the law, which barely survived an effort to repeal it by GOP lawmakers earlier this year, is unusual because it enables inmates to challenge widespread racial disparities rather than being forced to focus narrowly on whether they themselves were the victims of discrimination. It is now being invoked for the first time in court this week.

Prosecutor Cal Colyer expressed concern that the act would be used to start a witch hunt within the prosecutor’s office for “racial animus,” but, as defense attorney Henderson Hill explained, the law extends far beyond purposeful acts of racism within the court system.

“If you look at the language of the act, if you look at the Racial Justice Act itself, you’ve almost been convinced that the state legislators don’t want to get into whether or not there was racial animus in the prosecutor’s office in 2009,” Hill said. “[What the act acknowledges] is that we’re operating in a context, in a culture, that allowed those legacy [racial] issues to continue.”

Hill represents Marcus Robinson, “someone who came within hours of execution,” in his Racial Justice Act petition. Robinson, who is black, was convicted of first-degree murder for killing a white man in 1991 and then sentenced to death row by a mostly white jury three years later. And he has significant statistical evidence on his side showing that his petition should be granted:

“Over the past twenty years, North Carolina prosecutors have continued the tradition of excluding black citizens from juries through the use of peremptory strike…The MSU Study shows that, at the time of Mr. Robinson’s trial in 1994, prosecutors statewide struck qualified black and racial minority citizens from service on death penalty juries at more than twice the rate they struck white citizens.

Statewide from 1990 through 1994, the State struck eligible black venire members at an average rate of 57.3 percent but struck all other venire members at an average rate of only 26.0 percent. The probability of observing a statewide racial disparity of this magnitude in a race neutral peremptory strike system is less than 0.001. […]

The MSU Study shows that, at the time of Mr. Robinson’s trial in 1994, death eligible defendants were significantly more likely to receive the death penalty if they were convicted of killing at least one white victim…Statewide, from 1990 to 1994, death eligible cases with at least one white victim were 3.1 times more likely to result in a death sentence than all other cases.”

Although Robinson’s appeal is the first to be heard by the North Carolina court system and will set much of the precedent for how this new statute will be applied, he is not the only person contesting his sentence under the RJA. Out of the 158 people on death row statewide, 152 inmates are currently in the process of filing a petition. The outcome of Robinson’s case — whose first evidentiary hearing is currently scheduled for November — will be worth watching to see if the Racial Justice Act proves to be an effective remedy for the racial bias that marks the application of the death penalty today.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the author of the House GOP plan to phase out Medicare, does not like it when constituents publicly challenge him. In fact, people who disagree with Ryan have a habit of getting arrested for it. A few weeks ago, several of Ryan’s unemployed constituents staged a peaceful sit-in at his Kenosha, Wisconsin office to protest his unpopular decision not to hold any free public town halls during the August recess. These constituents didn’t think they should have to pay to ask their elected representative a question. Instead of meeting with them, Ryan’s staff called the police.

So it should come as no surprise that this week, three people who paid to see Ryan speak were arrested and charged with trespassing for protesting the event. One constituent, a 71-year-old retired plumber from Kenosha, Wisconsin, was handcuffed and pushed to the ground by security:

Video footage taken by an attendee at the event shows that one of them, Tom Nielsen, received particularly harsh treatment — he was pushed to the ground and handcuffed. Nielsen received an additional charge of resisting arrest.

Ryan was speaking Tuesday afternoon at the Whitnall Park Rotary Club. Protesters gathered both outside his event and inside, standing up and disrupting the congressman’s remarks.

According to Oak Creek Patch, as many as a dozen protesters were escorted out of the event. Another dozen or so left willingly.

Ryan seemed supremely undisturbed that a senior citizen worried about receiving the Medicare he’s paid into his whole life was treated so brutally. Indeed, Ryan made light of the arrest and quipped to the audience, “I hope he’s taking his blood pressure medication.”

Watch it, courtesy of Wisconsin Jobs Now:

Another woman was shown the door when she challenged Ryan’s claim that the jobs crisis is directly related to the debt crisis. “Our debt is out of control because of the tax cuts you’re giving,” she said. “Our unemployment in 2003 was 6.2% before the tax cuts went through. Now our unemployment rate is 9.1%. What are you doing to create jobs, Congressman?” Another woman was escorted out when she stood up while Ryan was speaking and said, “You won’t talk to us. How can we give our opinions when you refuse to talk to us?”

Ryan has consistently faced angry constituents at his events since his Medicare-killing budget became a top GOP priority. Tired of being publicly embarrassed by constituents who voice their disagreement and say his policies are hurting them, Ryan has resorted to increasingly harsh responses to deal with people who have the audacity to speak up at his events.

Earlier this week, during the Republican presidential primary debate at the Reagan Library in California, the candidates were asked about their views on immigration. Almost all of the candidates endorsed harsh, punitive, and likely ineffective measures to deal with undocumented immigrants, with Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) in favor of militarization and former Gov. Mitt Romney (R-MA) endorsing a fence on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R) focused instead on welcoming legal immigration, with Paul saying that we should not have a fence on the border because that’s not “what America is all about.” Huntsman suggested that the U.S. has to make sure it deals with the problem in a “human” manner like President Ronald Reagan did.

The invocation of Reagan’s legacy is an important point. In fact, if one looks back to one of the 1980 GOP presidential primary debates, it’s clear that the party’s debates over the issue have gone far to the right of where they used to be. In a debate at the Women’s Voter Forum that year, candidates George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan responded to a question about whether the U.S. should allow the children of undocumented immigrants to be in public schools by noting that immigration has to be dealt with in a comprehensive and humane way. Bush referred to these immigrants as “decent, family-loving people” and Reagan reminded debate viewers that immigrants who are working here are going to be paying taxes here too and dismissed the idea of a border fence:

BUSH: Look, I’d like to see something done about the illegal alien problem that would be so sensitive and so understanding about labor needs and human needs that that problem wouldn’t come up. But today, if those people are here, I would reluctantly say I think they would get whatever it is, you know, that society is giving to their neighbors. But the problem has to be solved. The problem has to be solved. Because, as we have made illegal some kinds of labor that I’d like to see legal, we’re doing two things, we’re creating a whole society of really honorable, decent, family-loving people that are in violation of the law and secondly we’re exacerbating relations with Mexico. [...] If they’re living here, I don’t want to see six and eight year old kids being made totally uneducated and made to feel like they’re living totally outside the law. These are good people, strong people.

REAGAN: Rather than talking about putting up a fence, why don’t we work out some recognition of our mutual problems? Make it possible for them to come here legally with a work permit. And then, while they’re working and earning here they can pay taxes here. And then when they want to go back, they can go back. Open the borders both ways.

Watch it:

(HT: @AllisonKilkenny)

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) has long been known for her vitriolic rhetoric against undocumented immigrants. Just this week, she slammed presidential contender Rick Perry (R-TX) for once supporting the DREAM Act and comprehensive immigration reform. “It is not comprehensive reform to put people who are here illegally, who violated the law, and put them in front of the line for those folks who have been waiting and doing all the right things to come to the United States,” she said.

But on Wednesday, Martinez surprised many when she admitted that her own grandparents were among those “people…who violated the law” when they came to the U.S. as undocumented immigrants:

New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez has acknowledged her paternal grandparents came to the U.S. illegally, amid national attention and protests over her ongoing efforts to bar illegal immigrants from getting driver’s licenses.

“I know they arrived without documents, especially my father’s father,” the Republican said Wednesday in an interview in Spanish with KLUZ-TV, the Albuquerque Univision affiliate. [...]

Martinez has made headlines recently for her push to repeal a state law that lets illegal immigrants get a New Mexico driver’s license. She has added the issue to the agenda for a special session on redistricting that opened Tuesday.

This is the first time Martinez has definitively answered questions about her grandparents’ immigration status, and admitted that she would not be in this country — let alone be a governor — if they had not entered the U.S. without papers. At a rally yesterday against Martinez’s effort to repeal the driver’s license law, protesters held placards that read, “Dear Susana. Do you know your history? Did you forget your roots?”

Martinez’s office was quick to preemptively denounce anyone who would “personally attack the governor” for this revelation. But given her hard-line stance and willingness to separate other families who are undocumented, many activists hope she will keep her own roots in mind when issues like the DREAM Act come up.

This week, Martinez reiterated, “I don’t support piecemeal legislation such as the DREAM Act.” However, Martinez should know better than anyone that we don’t control our parents’ or grandparents’ actions, and shouldn’t be punished for them.