Lawyers spar over alleged jury selection racial bias in Black defendant's death row case
Lawyers for a Black defendant challenging his 2009 death sentence argued Wednesday that North Carolina's documented history of racial discrimination and perceived implicit bias in jury selection supports his claim that he should be resentenced to life in prison.
Lawyers for a Black defendant challenging his 2009 death sentence argued Wednesday that North Carolina's documented history of racial discrimination and perceived implicit bias in jury selection supports his claim that he should be resentenced to life in prison.
If that were to happen in the case of Hasson Bacote, who was sentenced to death by 10 white and two Black jurors for his role in a felony murder in Johnston County, more than 100 others on the state's death row could see their sentences similarly commuted.
White jurors "get shown the box. Black jurors with the same background get shown the door," Henderson Hill, senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said during closing arguments in Bacote's trial court hearing.
His is the lead case testing the scope of North Carolina's Racial Justice Act of 2009, which allowed death row inmates to seek resentences if they could show racial bias was a factor in their cases.
The landmark law was repealed in 2013 by then-Gov. Pat McCrory, who believed it created a "loophole to avoid the death penalty," but the state Supreme Court in 2020 ruled in favor of many of the inmates, allowing those who had already filed challenges in their cases, like Bacote, to move ahead.
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