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Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Former Connecticut governor: NC must confront racism in the death penalty
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.
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Gretchen Engel of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation on the role of race in our justice system
Gretchen Engel (Courtesy photo) Two of the most hotly debated topics in law and policy — racial justice and the death penalty — have been on trial in a high-profile criminal case in Johnston County over the last year. In the case, a man named Hasson Bacote challenged the death sentence he received in a murder trial based on his contention that race, and racism played a role in the sentence he received — something that was prohibited at one point in our state under a law known as the Racial Justice Act. Last week, in what is being widely hailed as a landmark decision, a superior court judge issued a lengthy and detailed ruling in which held that race had in fact played big and wrongful role in Bacote's sentence. So, what exactly did the judge find and what does it mean for our state going forward? Recently NC Newsline sat down with one of the lawyers who represented Bacote — Center for Death Penalty Litigation executive director Gretchen Engel — to find out. Click here to listen to the full interview with Gretchen Engel.
Yahoo
13-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
A North Carolina Judge Just Acknowledged an Undeniable Truth: The Death Penalty Is Racist
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. Sometimes, what is right in front of you is the hardest to see, and the truth is hidden in plain sight. For a long time, that has been the case with the role of race in America's death penalty system. It is by now well documented that from start to finish—from charging decisions to jury selection, decisions about sentencing, and decisions about who gets executed—race plays a key role in death penalty cases. Yet often, courts have found a way to ignore or dismiss those unpleasant facts in their capital punishment jurisprudence. Following a notorious 1987 Supreme Court precedent, McCleskey v. Kemp, judges have focused narrowly on the question of whether defendants in capital cases can provide proof of overt, intentional discrimination. They could do so if they could show that the prosecutor said that they were charging the defendant with a capital crime because of their race or the race of their victim. Or maybe if prosecutors make overt appeals to racial prejudice during jury selection or the trial? Or perhaps if jurors say anything about race in their deliberations or in explaining why they believed the defendant deserved a death sentence? These things happen rarely, though. Focusing on them means that judges will ignore context and patterns of racial prejudice and miss what is right in front of them. On Feb. 7, North Carolina Judge Wayland Sermons showed what happens when judges broaden the context and notice patterns. What he did made the realities of race in death cases come alive. His ruling has the potential to change the way Americans think about race and capital punishment. It is one of the most thorough and persuasive demonstrations ever recorded in this country of the way the death penalty serves as a form of legal lynching. Sermons made his ruling in the case of Hasson Bacote, who, as NBC News notes, was convicted of murder 'along with two others in the 2007 fatal shooting of Anthony Surles, 18, during a home robbery attempt when Bacote was 20. The other two defendants in the case were convicted on lesser charges and later released from prison.' The judge based his decision on a combination of 'statistical analyses, social science research, the historical and present-day influence of race in the administration of criminal punishment … as well as the words and actions of North Carolina prosecutors.' Judge Sermons also considered documents from the trial court, 'affidavits of prosecutors, voir dire transcripts and jury selection notes from the files of prosecutors around the state.' He drew together this evidence and was inventive in piecing it together. His willingness to do so helped him see what was right in front of him. Sermons did not have to insist that Bacote had to find a smoking gun showing evidence of intentional racial discrimination in his case because the same year Bacote was convicted, North Carolina enacted the Racial Justice Act. That act allowed judges in North Carolina to consider a wide range of evidence, including statistics, in determining whether race played an impermissible role in a criminal trial. Before its passage, judges in the Tar Heel State had only found racial discrimination in jury selection one time. Nonetheless, in 2013, a mere four years after its passage, as the Equal Justice Initiative notes, 'In the face of overwhelming evidence that racial bias had infected death penalty cases in North Carolina, the state legislature repealed the RJA … [and] made the repeal retroactive.' Seven years later, the North Carolina Supreme Court 'declared the repeal's retroactivity provision unconstitutional' and allowed people like Bacote to continue litigating RJA claims. Bacote was one of them, though from the time he filed his RJA claim, it took nearly 14 years for it to be heard. Bacote was given a death sentence by a jury composed of 10 white and two Black jurors. He contended that his trial was replete with racism. He offered evidence to suggest that the racial composition of his jury was not a coincidence. It included the fact that local prosecutors 'were nearly two times more likely to exclude people of color from jury service than to exclude whites, and in Bacote's case, prosecutors chose to strike prospective Black jurors from the jury pool at more than three times the rate of prospective white jurors.' Judge Sermons was convinced. He went out of his way to make clear that 'the RJA does not require proof of discrimination by a specific prosecutor or in a defendant's own case.' The judge also pointed out that a capital trial can be racialized when prosecutors denigrate 'Black defendants in thinly veiled racial terms.' Sermons took note of the fact that in an earlier trial, the person handling Bacote's case had 'described Black defendants as 'predators of the African plain.' ' And, in Bacote's case, the prosecutor referred to him as a 'thug,' a term Judge Sermons said 'has racial connotations.' For a long time such thinly veiled racial terms have played a role in capital trials across this country. They prod juries, as I wrote more than 30 years ago, 'to assert the value of white life against the devaluing acts of Black men.' And, if judges ignore those kinds of remarks, they will never understand the complex ways in which racism appears in the death penalty system. Finally, Bacote also offered statistics to show that Black defendants were much more likely to be sentenced to death in the county where he was prosecuted than were whites. Again, Judge Sermon was convinced. 'In Johnston County,' he wrote, 'Black defendants … have faced a 100 percent chance of receiving a death sentence, while white defendants have a better than even chance of receiving a life sentence.' The fact that Sermons' kind of analysis is not the usual fare in death penalty cases can, as I noted above, be traced back to the Supreme Court's McCleskey decision. In that case, a Black defendant introduced a sophisticated statistical study that demonstrated a very powerful race-of-the-victim effect. The study showed that Black people convicted of murder were much more likely to be sentenced to death if they murdered a white victim than if they murdered a person of color. The Supreme Court did not dispute the validity of the statistics. However, it ruled that they were irrelevant in proving that a particular defendant was subject to racial discrimination. As the court put it, 'The statistics do not prove that race enters into any capital sentencing decisions or that race was a factor in the petitioner's case. The likelihood of racial prejudice allegedly shown by the study does not constitute the constitutional measure of an unacceptable risk of racial prejudice. … At most, the Baldus study indicates a discrepancy that appears to correlate with race, but this discrepancy does not constitute a major systemic defect.' Since it was decided, McCleskey has helped blind judges to the realities of racial discrimination that were staring them in the face. Judge Sermons' decision cannot change that in one fell swoop. But it will have far-reaching effects. In the first instance, it will help 'many of the other 122 inmates facing the death chamber by paving the way for them to successfully challenge their sentences.' Beyond that, it offers a template through which Americans can see how race operates in capital cases. And in the long run of history, it will pave the way for the time when the United States Supreme Court gets around to overruling McCleskey.
Yahoo
08-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Johnston County judge finds death sentences influenced by racial discrimination: Court Documents
SMITHFIELD, N.C. (WNCN) — On Friday, a Johnston County judge found that race played a significant role in the death penalty trial of Hasson Bacote, influencing the makeup of the jury along with the decision of the death sentence. Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons also found that racial discrimination extends beyond Bacote's case 'poisoning all death sentences in Johnston County' and districts that include Harnett and Lee counties. 'We are grateful that Judge Sermons carefully weighed the evidence and found that the administration of the death penalty in Johnston County remains deeply entangled with racism,' said Gretchen M. Engel, executive director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, which along with the ACLU and the NAACP's Legal Defense Fund brought forward Mr. Bacote's Racial Justice Act claim. 'This decision is a damning indictment of the death penalty and should serve as a call for every North Carolina death sentence to be reexamined. North Carolina must never carry out another execution tainted by racial discrimination.' The ruling comes after former North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper's grant of clemency to 15 people on death row, including Bacote. Judge Sermons' decision however will not affect Bacote's sentence as he is already resentenced to life without parole. PREVIOUS | Gov. Cooper commutes 15 death sentences on last day as North Carolina governor The ruling is still significant to 121 people remaining on the state's death row because of the findings in Bacote's case. 'I am deeply grateful to my family, my lawyers, the experts, and to everyone who fought for justice—not just in my case, but for so many others,' Mr. Bacote said in a statement made through his attorneys. 'When my death sentence was commuted by Governor Cooper, I felt enormous relief that the burden of the death penalty — and all of the stress and anxiety that go with it — were lifted off my shoulders. I am grateful to the court for having the courage to recognize that racial bias affected my case and so many others.' Sermons said that all evidence showed that Black people were denied a voice in the justice system and prosecutors often felt free to invoke racist tropes and slurs. In Bacote's case, court documents state that 'the prosecution struck qualified Black potential jurors at 3.3 times the rate it struck all other qualified jurors.' Documents also stated that patterns of discrimination against Black venire members proved to be consistent. Prosecutor Greg Butler also referred to Black defendants with terms including 'piece of trash' and 'predators of the African plain,' according to documents. Cassandra Stubbs, the director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project said that this case could lead to a significant impact on similar cases across North Carolina. 'We expect that there will be efforts from other defendants to bring their meritorious claims to justice, and I hope that the leadership in North Carolina finally sits down and wrestles with these facts. That we see a different way of selecting juries, that we can look at punishment differently, and that we finally try to take seriously the underlying goal of the RJA which is to try to stop race from playing a role in our criminal justice system,' Stubbs said. Stubbs said that overall she is satisfied with the outcome and the judge's decision and could be a path forward for other death row inmates who faced discrimination to bring their claims forward. 'I'm thrilled on behalf of Mr. Bacote and that there is a court after 14 years that has lived up to the Racial Justice Act,' Stubbs said, 'The promise for the law was to allow for a reckoning and an examination in the ways in which racial bias taint our death penalty system, and today's decision does that.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Racial bias tainted jury selection and death sentence for a Black man in North Carolina, judge says
SMITHFIELD, N.C. (AP) — Racial bias tainted the decision to strike Black people from the jury pool and to impose the death penalty in the 2009 trial of a Black man in North Carolina, a judge ruled on Friday, part of what he called 'glaring' patterns of bias in a prosecutorial district outside the capital. Hasson Bacote was among a group of 15 death row inmates whose sentences were commuted to life without parole last year by Gov. Roy Cooper in one of his final acts in office. That means the ruling won't make a legal difference for Bacote. However it could help several other death row inmates in similar circumstances, said Gretchen M. Engel, executive director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation. In addition to the problems that prejudiced Bacote's trial, Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons Jr. found that racial bias tainted jury selection and sentencing in other Johnston County cases. Sermons found 'glaring' bias in the fact that Black defendants in capital cases were sentenced to death 100% of the time while similar white defendants received a death sentence only 45% of the time. See for yourself — The Yodel is the go-to source for daily news, entertainment and feel-good stories. By signing up, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy. None of those Black inmates in Johnston County have been executed, and North Carolina has not carried out an execution since 2006. The judge said race was a 'significant factor' in the decisions to seek the death penalty in the first place and in jury selection, when looking at other cases tried by Assistant District Attorney Gregory Butler as well as other death penalty cases in the same prosecutorial district, which at the time included Harnett and Lee counties. In Bacote's case, Butler struck 75% of prospective Black jurors and only 23% of prospective non-Black jurors. In Butler's other cases, risk of removal from the jury pool by peremptory challenges was more than 10 times higher for Black candidates than for non-Black candidates, Sermons wrote. Butler testified that he never struck a juror for a 'racial reason.' Sermons found that unconvincing. In Bacote's case, for example, Butler explained his removal of five Black jurors by citing their opposition to the death penalty. However, 'Butler did not strike white jurors who expressed similar reservations, in some cases with nearly identical language,' Sermons wrote. The U.S. Supreme Court made clear in 1986 eliminating potential jurors merely because of their race violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which requires that people in similar circumstances be treated the same. However, jury selection bias claims are often difficult to prove. The North Carolina Department of Justice, whose lawyers represented the state in Bacote's case, have already 'notified the court that we intend to appeal,' said Nazneen Ahmed, a spokesperson for Attorney General Jeff Jackson, who leads the department. Bacote challenged his death sentence under North Carolina's 2009 Racial Justice Act, which allowed prisoners to receive life without parole if they could show that racial bias was the reason for their death sentence. The law was repealed in 2013, but the state Supreme Court has ruled that it still applies to any prisoner who had a Racial Justice Act case pending at the time of the repeal. During a two-week hearing last fall, Sermons listened to evidence that included statistical studies of how the death penalty is implemented in North Carolina and Johnston County in particular. In his Friday ruling, the judge said the weight of the evidence did not prove that racial disparities prejudiced death penalty cases statewide.
