Former Connecticut governor: NC must confront racism in the death penalty

Yahoo

03-03-2025

A billboard that welcomed people to Smithfield, a town in Johnston County, stood until the 1970s, "but the efforts to keep Black Johnstonians off juries continued," said Henderson Hill, one of the attorneys for Hasson Bacote, a Black man sentenced to death in Johnston County in 2009. (Photo: Exhibit filed by Bacote's attorneys)
As a former prosecutor, mayor, governor of Connecticut, and a member of the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, I have spent much of my career in and around the criminal legal system learning firsthand that our system is far from perfect. Human beings are fallible – and when the stakes of a trial are life or death – it is essential that we examine the process thoroughly for fairness and accuracy. The more I learned, the more I realized that the only way to ensure the death penalty is not unfairly applied and does not cause additional harm to victims was to end it. I went from prosecuting homicide cases in New York to becoming a lead advocate in my state for abolishing capital punishment.
Three weeks ago, a North Carolina judge issued a decision in a case brought under the state's Racial Justice Act that examined the impact of race in capital cases. After years of legal wrangling over the scope of the law, Hasson Bacote's case was the first in which Racial Justice Act petitioners were actually afforded the opportunity to present witnesses. Persuaded by extensive evidence of the systemic exclusion of Black jurors and racially disproportionate sentencing outcomes, the court's opinion confirms what many have long known: racial bias infects the administration of the death penalty, including in North Carolina.
Nowhere is this disturbing truth clearer than in Johnston County, where Mr. Bacote, the lead petitioner in the Racial Justice Act litigation, was tried and sentenced to death. Since 1990, Johnston County juries returned death verdicts in every case in which Johnston County prosecutors sought death against a Black defendant. Meanwhile, White defendants in the county had a better than 50-50 chance of receiving life sentences. This disparity is not a coincidence.
Mr. Bacote's legal team conducted an exhaustive review of approximately 680,000 pages of prosecutors' notes from every capital trial in North Carolina between 1980 and 2010 and found undeniable proof that race plays a central role in determining who gets to sit on juries and who is sentenced to death in death penalty cases. Across Johnston County, prosecutors struck prospective jurors of color at nearly twice the rate of white prospective jurors in all capital cases. One prosecutor's notes disparaged a Black prospective juror with a criminal record as a 'thug' while another prosecutor commented derisively on a juror questionnaire that a Black woman was 'too dumb.'
The court appropriately vacated the death sentence imposed in Mr. Bacote's case. But as I said in 2012 when I signed legislation ending the death penalty in Connecticut, pivotal moments like this demand sober reflection, not celebration.
The court's recognition of the pattern of racism in sentencing adds to a growing body of evidence showing that racial discrimination is not an anomaly in North Carolina's death penalty system, it is a defining feature. Between 2007 and 2009, three Black men sentenced to death in North Carolina were exonerated after spending more than a decade each on death row, narrowly escaping execution for crimes they did not commit. In 2012, a court resentenced three other people to life in prison because racial discrimination played a key role in securing their sentences. The judge in that case hoped that decision would be the 'first step in creating a system of justice free from the pernicious influence of race' and one that 'truly lives up to our ideal of equal justice under the law.'
The continued evidence of racial discrimination in sentencing and jury selection shows that North Carolina has yet to realize this vision. Just last December, then Governor Roy Cooper cited continued concerns about the role of race in sentencing decisions when he announced he was commuting the sentences of 15 people on death row.
When the Racial Justice Act was passed in 2009, it intended to address the racial bias baked into capital sentencing. Fifteen years later, North Carolina has yet to ensure that every person facing a capital trial has a fair, unbiased chance at justice. With more than 30 years of proof that racial discrimination infects capital sentencing in North Carolina and more than 120 people still on death row, it is clear more work needs to be done. I urge North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson and Governor Josh Stein to undertake a comprehensive investigation into the use of capital punishment in their state. Failing to act in the face of this undeniable evidence would be a tacit endorsement of a system that has disproportionately condemned Black defendants to death and excluded people in their state from the most important function of jury service.
True leaders do not ignore injustice, they confront it head on. So yes, we need sober reflection. But what we need more urgently is action: an investigation, accountability, and a commitment to ensuring that racial bias no longer dictates who lives and who dies in North Carolina.