Challenges to Jury Selection Continue under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act

On October 2, Judge Gregory Weeks heard tes­ti­mo­ny regard­ing racial bias in jury selec­tion, as three North Carolina death row inmates chal­lenged their sen­tences under the state’s Racial Justice Act. Prof. Barbara O’Brien of Michigan State University pro­vid­ed sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence of racial bias in the fre­quent rejec­tion of African-American poten­tial jurors from death penal­ty tri­als in the state. According to O’Brien’s study, qual­i­fied black jurors were twice as like­ly to be dis­missed from serv­ing in North Carolina death penal­ty cas­es as non-black jurors. Her study ana­lyzed jury selec­tion pat­terns under both the Racial Justice Act of 2009 and the more restric­tive ver­sion that law­mak­ers passed in 2012, since there is dis­pute over which ver­sion of the law applies to the defen­dants. O’Brien found racial bias under both stan­dards and in the cas­es of the indi­vid­ual defen­dants. Earlier in 2012, Judge Weeks had reduced Marcus Robinson​’s death sen­tence to life because of racial bias found in his case.

(P. Woolverton, ​“Racial Justice Act wit­ness Barbara O’Brien says sta­tis­tics show blacks excused more than whites in cap­i­tal cas­es,” Fayetteville Observer, October 3, 2012). See Race. Listen to DPIC’s pod­cast on Race.