Five men on North Carolina​’s death row filed motions to have their death sen­tences reduced to life with­out parole based on data that indi­cate racial dis­par­i­ties in the state’s jus­tice sys­tem. These cas­es are the first to request appli­ca­tion of North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act, which allows the use of statewide or region­al sta­tis­ti­cal stud­ies to chal­lenge a death sen­tence because of racial bias. In all five cas­es, the vic­tims in the under­ly­ing mur­der were white and the defen­dants were black. Moreover, pros­e­cu­tors struck eli­gi­ble blacks from the juries in these cas­es at greater rates than whites. In some cas­es, pros­e­cu­tors struck eli­gi­ble black jurors while accept­ing sim­i­lar white jurors. Ken Rose, staff attor­ney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL), said, ​“We would like to live and prac­tice in a sys­tem where race does not mat­ter. But the results show that white vic­tims are val­ued more high­ly than black ones, and that black jurors are being denied their right to serve. This evi­dence of racial bias can­not be ignored.”

The appeals will rely on recent stud­ies from Michigan State University and the University of Colorado that found race to be a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in jury selec­tion and that the race of the vic­tim appeared to fac­tor into whether the death penal­ty would be sought against a defen­dant. One study showed that pros­e­cu­tors in death penal­ty cas­es used peremp­to­ry strikes to exclude eli­gi­ble blacks from juries at more than twice the rate that they exclud­ed whites. Of the 159 inmates now on North Carolina’s death row, 31 were sen­tenced by all-white juries and anoth­er 38 had only one minor­i­ty in their sen­tenc­ing juries. Another study found that a defendant’s odds of get­ting the death penal­ty increased by almost 3 times if the vic­tim is white. Malcolm Hunter, Executive Director of CDPL, said, “[W]e can­not, in good con­science, exe­cute peo­ple who received death sen­tences because of the col­or of their skin, or their vic­tims’ skin.”

(S. Ovaska and A. Blythe, ​“Five death row inmates seek new sen­tences, claim racial bias,” News & Observer, August 3, 2010; ​“First five appeals filed under Racial Justice Act; cas­es from Forsyth, Davie coun­ties are includ­ed,” Winston-Salem Journal, August 3, 2010; Center for Death Penalty Litigation press release, Aug. 3, 2010). Read more about the five cas­es in which legal chal­lenges were filed. See also Race.

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