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RALEIGH (AP) — Republican legislators argued Thursday for restricting a new law that made North Carolina the second state after Kentucky to allow death-penalty defendants to claim that statistical data indicates that racial bias tips the scales of justice against them.

The state's Racial Justice Act was adopted last year. Supporters said it was needed to prevent black defendants from being punished more harshly what whites. But Republicans argued the law should be altered to prevent it from being used in pending cases before a conviction.

The widow of slain Charlotte-Mecklenburg police Officer Jeff Shelton urged state legislators to revisit the issue this year. Jennifer Shelton said at a news conference Thursday that the need for a revision was shown two weeks ago when a Superior Court judge postponed the death-penalty trial of her husband's accused killer until October.

The judge said that because the law is so new, he felt he had to give the suspect's lawyers time to gather information on what role race may play when North Carolina prosecutors seek or juries impose the death penalty, The Charlotte Observer reported.

"I disagree with the basis of the Racial Justice Act. I believe that a person is tried for their crime and not for the color of their skin," said Shelton, who is white. "A defendant may argue and win a claim of racial discrimination under current law. Therefore, I do not support giving criminals another tool to use to get away with the crimes they have committed."

"I'm standing here because this hit me personally," Shelton said.

Demeatrius Montgomery, 28, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the 2007 slayings of Shelton and Officer Sean Clark, who were both shot in the head after responding to a domestic disturbance in Charlotte.

Mecklenburg Assistant District Attorney Marsha Goodenow said race is not a factor in the decisions prosecutors make to seek a death sentence.

House Minority Whip Thom Tillis, R-Mecklenburg, said Republicans will attempt to introduce a measure during the legislative session that started this week to narrow the law to considering race only after a guilty verdict is reached. But the GOP proposal is unlikely to advance this year.

The decision to join Kentucky came last year after months of contentious debate and House and Senate votes along party lines. Any effort to introduce new legislation also faces multiple procedural hurdles lawmakers impose on themselves to focus work this year on passing adjustments to the state budget.

"We're not going to go around the rules to get into the Racial Justice Act again. This session is to focus on the budget, not to go in with bills that will be controversial," said House Majority Leader Hugh Holliman, D-Davidson. "We'll be glad to listen, but unless there's more than one case out there, it can wait until January" when the Legislature's long legislative session begins.

The law was opposed by district attorneys, sheriffs and victims' advocates who said it would make death penalty prosecutions too difficult. North Carolina has not had an execution since August 2006.

Advocates pointed to research such as a 1990 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office that said dozens of studies have found "a pattern of evidence indicating racial disparities in the charging, sentencing, and imposition of the death penalty."

In one case cited by supporters, then-Gov. Mike Easley commuted the death sentence of Robert Bacon Jr. to life in prison in 2001. An all-white jury had sentenced him to death for stabbing his lover's husband to death. The woman, who is white and who lured her husband to the spot where he was killed, avoided a death sentence and has since been paroled.

State NAACP president William Barber said the law will remain a target of Republican opposition.

"There are some people who will never want to acknowledge that we have racial disparities in America," Barber said.