The misnamed Racial Justice Act has officially created a travesty, with 119 of North Carolina's 159 Death Row inmates filing discrimination claims. (Update, per Nancy's story Thursday: 135.)

Most of them might succeed. All they need is a little statistical manipulation to "prove" their claim.

Even white offenders, like Blanche Taylor Moore, have a case if their victims were white. As a recent study showed, murderers of white people are statistically three times more likely to receive the death penalty in North Carolina than are killers whose victims are of other races. Therefore, by the logic invested in the Racial Justice Act, Moore was sentenced under a racial disparity. She deserves to have her sentence commuted!

There might be an angle of this kind for everyone.

Reopening 119 old murder cases is going to gum up our already overloaded criminal-justice system -- which may have been the intent of the legislation approved last year by the legislature and signed -- with cheers -- by our governor. It will be easier just to move everyone off Death Row and give up future capital prosecutions.

When murderers can use state law to present themselves as victims of racial discrimination in virtually any case, capital punishment is over.