Latest news with #RJA
Yahoo
11-03-2025
- Yahoo
Judge grants first-ever Racial Justice Act motion in San Francisco
SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — For the first time in San Francisco since Racial Justice Act became state law in 2021, a judge granted an RJA motion filed by public defenders, attorneys said. The San Francisco Public Defender's Office said it successfully raised the motion for a Black man, 22-year-old Adonte Bailey. A police officer who arrested and testified at trial against Bailey 'exhibited implicit bias during the man's arrest and during trial testimony,' SFPDO wrote. 'Implicit bias plays a huge role in our legal system — from police to prosecutors to judge — and has historically resulted in the over-policing, over-charging, and over-sentencing of people of color,' said Deputy Public Defender Diamond Ward, who represented Bailey. At a RJA hearing, the judge reduced some of Bailey's felony convictions to misdemeanors. Since the Racial Justice Act went into effect, San Francisco public defenders have filed RJA motions in numerous cases, but few have resulted in judges granting evidentiary hearings. Bailey's case was the first RJA motion in San Francisco Superior Court that led to a judge grating a hearing and issuing remedies for the defendant. Woman wrongly accused of theft at Pilates studio goes viral on TikTok Bailey was arrested in late 2023 while a police officer was responding to a report of someone standing on the street with a gun. The officer's own words, recorded by his body worn camera, were used at the hearing to show evidence of bias, attorneys said. 'The officer's racially-coded words and discriminatory language amounted to a violation of the Racial Justice Act,' said Deputy Public Defender Lilah Wolf, who argued the RJA motion in court. 'While our office has always challenged instances of more explicit racial animus toward our clients, the Racial Justice Act now empowers us to address this kind of insidious implicit bias that undercuts due process and perpetuates the unfair treatment of Black and Brown people in the criminal legal system.' California's Racial Justice Act states that implicit bias, which is often unintentional and unconscious, may inject racism and unfairness. 'We hope that this ruling stands as a testament to the power of the California Racial Justice Act that we can win these motions and help challenge unjust convictions and sentences,' said San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju. SFPDO said the 'groundbreaking' legal victory was achieved by Deputy Public Defender Lilah Wolf, Deputy Public Defender Oliver Kroll, and research director Sujung Kim. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
11-02-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
At least 300,000 high street jobs to go, M&S and Tesco warn
Britain's biggest retailers have warned that the high street will shed at least 300,000 jobs over the next three years in a blow to the Chancellor's hopes of reviving local town and city centres. Retailers including Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's and Tesco have fired a warning shot over the future of the industry, saying a 'perfect storm' of higher costs and red tape meant they expected one in 10 shop floor workers to leave retail by 2028. The Retail Jobs Alliance (RJA), a campaign group whose members also include Asda, Primark, B&Q owner Kingfisher and Morrisons, said the number of people leaving the sector could be even higher than its 300,000 forecast. It said this was because the group's estimates did not take into account changes announced in the Budget, which pushed up costs for retailers. The retailers which are part of the RJA employ just under a third of those working in the sector, equal to almost 1m people. It comes as the campaign group re-established itself amid fears over looming higher property taxes for many large city centre stores, on top of rising worker costs. In October's Budget, Rachel Reeves said she was increasing the rate of National Insurance contributions paid by employers and lowering the threshold by which companies have to pay it, as well as raising the national minimum wage. Retailers have suggested these worker changes and a new recycling levy will push up their costs by around £7bn. However, high street bosses said they now risked even higher costs amid a planned shake-up of the business rates system by the Government. Under the proposals, the Treasury is planning to increase tax rates for large properties and lower them for small stores. Ministers have said this is part of their drive to 'breathe life' back into the high street. Retail giants this week said the business rate plans threatened to hamper retail investment in the UK, lead to store closures and ultimately mean more workers leave the sector. The RJA said thousands of stores were at risk of a heavy tax blow under the changes. It said much of the impact was likely to be felt in more impoverished communities. It comes at a time when local towns and city centres are already struggling to lure shoppers. Separate figures from the British Retail Consortium and KPMG released on Tuesday showed non-food sales had flatlined over the past three months. KPMG said consumer demand was 'still subdued and household essential bills still high', while retailers are facing rising costs. The decision by some of the UK's largest retailers to re-establish the RJA comes after months of warnings from individual high street chiefs. Ken Murphy, Tesco's chief executive, said last month that the business rate changes put big town centre stores at risk, despite them being 'often critical to maintaining the integrity of that high street'. He added: 'The risk is that more and more of those large retail sites become unviable.' Simon Roberts, Sainsbury's chief executive, said the Government needed to be careful over reforms, saying: 'There are big parts of the UK where the supermarket plays a fundamental role at the heart of a community, and we need to make sure that the reform of business rates makes the ongoing viability of those locations really clear.' The RJA said it was calling for the Government to give shops an exemption from the higher rate business rates multiplier, which is applied to the rateable value of properties to calculate the tax due. A spokesman for the RJA said: 'This change would provide much-needed relief for at-risk stores, enabling them to reinvest in their businesses, retain staff, and grow their footprint on the high street.' Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, said: 'Retail businesses are facing an onslaught from the Government. Business rates hikes, 1970s-inspired employment laws and tax rises simply for employing staff will see the shutters closed forever on thousands of shops. 'The choices Labour have made will directly lead to job losses, with the worst impacts felt in the most disadvantaged communities. Is this the 'change' people voted for?' A Treasury spokesman said: 'We delivered a once-in-a-Parliament Budget to wipe the slate clean. Now we are focused on going further and faster to kickstart economic growth so working people have more money in their pockets. 'We're levelling the playing field for high street businesses by permanently cutting business rates and removing the £110,000 cap for over 280,000 retail, hospitality and leisure business properties, while also capping corporation tax.' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
The Guardian
07-02-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
North Carolina judge finds race played role in Black man's death sentencing
On Friday, a North Carolina superior court judge ruled that race played a distinct role in jury selection for Hasson Bacote, a 38-year-old man who spent 15 years on death row before he was pardoned last December. Bacote was sentenced to death in 2009 after a predominantly white jury found him guilty of shooting someone during a robbery. His attorneys noted that there was racial bias in the courtroom, in which the judge and all lawyers were white and prosecutors struck Black jurors at three times the rate of white jurors. Friday's ruling from Judge Wayland J Sermons Jr does not apply statewide, but the decision could upend North Carolina's death penalty sentencing laws. The state has one of the largest death rows in the country, with more than 100 people currently awaiting execution. Along with his attorneys, Bacote filed a lawsuit in 2010 that challenged his sentence, arguing that race played an extreme role in the jury selection not only in his case, but also in all death penalty cases across the state. His attorneys brought the case under North Carolina's Racial Justice Act (RJA), a 2009 law that prohibits seeking or imposing the death penalty because of race. The court found evidence of racist discrimination in Bacote's case, and other cases prosecuted by the North Carolina assistant district attorney Greg Butler. '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,' Bacote said in a statement. 'I want to thank Bryan Stevenson in particular for showing how unfair the jury selection was in my case. When my death sentence was commuted by Governor [Roy] 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. I remain hopeful that the fight for truth and justice will not stop here.' Last year Bacote's attorneys called on historians, statisticians and other scholars who argued a history of racism in trials in Johnston county. Johnston county, where Bacote was sentenced, has a long record of racism and problematic sentencing for capital defendants. It was the site of at least six lynchings between the Reconstruction era and the first world war; featured KKK billboards that read: 'Welcome to Klan country. Love it or leave it,' through the 1970s; and remains deeply segregated. In Bacote's case, the prosecution removed nearly three times more Black people from the jury than white people, while in the county overall they removed people of color at nearly twice the rate of white people, according to the ACLU. Since 1990, every Black person who faced a capital trial in Johnston county received the death penalty. 'We have white prosecutors standing in front of overwhelmingly white juries comparing Black defendants facing the death penalty to animals – 'mad dogs', 'hyenas', 'predators of the African plain',' Henderson Hill, senior counsel for the ACLU, said in a statement last year. 'The racism in North Carolina's application of the death penalty is so clear it's blinding.' Bacote's lawyers argued that the prosecutors in his 2009 case disproportionately kept Black people from becoming jurors: of over 170 capital cases in North Carolina, Black people were removed at a two-to-one ratio during jury selection. Black people were also prevented from becoming jurors if they were NAACP members, had a connection to an HBCU or lived in majority-Black areas. 'Racial discrimination in our courts and criminal legal system has long impacted death penalty sentencing,' Ashley Burrell, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said in a statement. 'Today's ruling affirms what we have argued all along: racism infects the death penalty. We are hopeful that future decisions will result in relief under the RJA for other North Carolinians currently on death row.'
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
North Carolina judge finds racial bias in landmark death penalty case
Johnston County courthouse. (Photo: North Carolina Judicial Branch website) A North Carolina judge ruled in a landmark case on Friday that race played a key role in the death penalty trial of Hasson Bacote, a Black man who challenged his death sentence under the Racial Justice Act. The court found evidence of discrimination in the case as well as in others filed in Johnston County. Following prior case law, Superior Court Judge Wayland J. Sermons, Jr. ruled that although the RJA does not require defendants to prove discrimination in their own case, Bacote did so in his, as a result of evidence presented regarding the makeup of his jury and the decision of prosecutors to sentence a Black man to death. Prosecutors deliberately struck Black jurors from jury service in Bacote's case at three times the rate of white jurors, Sermons found in his ruling. He also took note of racist phrases that the Johnston County prosecutor used to describe Black defendants as a 'thug,' 'piece of trash,' and 'predators of the African plain.' 'This decision provides more definitive proof that capital prosecutions in North Carolina are tainted with racial bias and discrimination,' Cassandra Stubbs, director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Capital Punishment Project, said. 'This ruling creates a path to justice for the hundred plus individuals who have filed claims and whose cases were similarly tainted with bias.' The ruling does not apply statewide — Sermons limited his ruling to Bacote's case only — but could influence other death penalty trials across North Carolina. North Carolina's Racial Justice Act, passed in 2009, allowed people to challenge their death sentences if they could demonstrate race played a role in their trials. In 2013, the state legislature repealed the statute. A legal challenge allowed the North Carolina Supreme Court to rule in 2020 that those who already filed claims under the act at the time it was repealed were entitled to hearings. At the end of his time in office, Gov. Roy Cooper on Dec. 31, 2024 commuted the sentences of 15 people on death row, including Bacote. The defendant was already resentenced to life without parole, but the court moved forward with Bacote's case due to its magnitude for the additional 100-plus people with pending RJA claims. '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,' Bacote said. 'I am grateful to the court for having the courage to recognize that racial bias affected my case and so many others. I remain hopeful that the fight for truth and justice will not stop here.' Closing arguments for Bacote's case took place in August after a lengthy trial earlier in 2024. Attorneys for Bacote built their case around 680,000 documents turned over in discovery, which one lawyer called 'the most comprehensive discovery provided by the state on jury selection issues in North Carolina.' '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,' Gretchen M. Engel, executive director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, said. 'North Carolina must never carry out another execution tainted by racial discrimination.' Bacote is represented by the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, the ACLU of North Carolina, the Legal Defense Fund, the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, and attorneys Jay Ferguson and Henderson Hill. The state is expected to appeal the ruling. Click here to read Judge Sermons' ruling.
