RALEIGH — North Carolina’s legal knot that has delayed executions could unravel completely in legislation tentatively approved yesterday by the Senate that is designed to weed out racial bias in capital punishment.

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Senators agreed 35-13 on legislation that attempts to ensure race isn’t a factor in a death penalty case, but not before they added language that seeks to remove obstacles to carrying out executions. A death-row prisoner hasn’t been executed since August 2006.

A final Senate vote is expected today, after which it will go to the House, where a version of the bill passed in 2007. The Senate or the House has to pass a version of the bill before Thursday or the issue likely couldn’t be heard again until 2011.

The amendment by Sen. Phil Berger, R-Rockingham, affirms a state Supreme Court ruling two weeks ago that found the state Medical Board couldn’t punish doctors participating in executions.

It also says the Council of State no longer has to sign off on execution protocols, eliminating the governor and the top statewide elected officials from a 100-year-old law that is the subject of a pending lawsuit filed by attorneys for death row inmates challenging that protocol.

The amendment, approved 37-11 without any debate after Senate Democrats met behind closed doors, would make the lawsuit moot and could open the door for the Department of Correction to resume executions again, Berger said. Failing to carry out capital punishment for convicted murderers, he told colleagues, is “a miscarriage of justice.”

Sen. Floyd McKissick, D-Durham, the bill’s primary sponsor, said he expected such an amendment could be added on the floor and told advocates of the Racial Justice Act that some accommodations to resume capital punishment may be necessary. Berger said he wasn’t surprised that the amendment was approved, particularly by Democrats, who are in the majority in the chamber.

“A lot of these folks campaigned on being pro-death penalty, and they would have had a hard time explaining why they would’ve voted against that amendment,” Berger said.

Otherwise, the bill would allow those convicted of first-degree murder to argue race played a role in their death sentence or a prosecutor’s decision to seek the death penalty. The defendant could use data or other evidence from a county, prosecutorial district or contiguous district to attempt to prove that race was a significant factor in the decisions.

“It’s not an anti-death penalty bill,” McKissick said, but rather makes “certain that when capital punishment is imposed, it is imposed without regard to racial bias.”

Stephen Dear, executive director of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, said he was proud of the Senate for “tacitly acknowledging the history of how racial bias has affected our criminal justice system ... and to make some institutional changes in our court system.”

Dear and others said they were disappointed with the amendment’s passage.

“It is shameful for the NC Senate to attempt to pass a watered down Racial Justice Act with barely any teeth as a pretext for trying to restart the death penalty,” said the Rev. William Barber, president of the state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.