Former North Carolina Death Row Prisoner Frank Chambers Resentenced

On August 11, 2026, for­mer North Carolina death-sen­tenced pris­on­er Frank Chambers, a Black man, was resen­tenced to two con­sec­u­tive life sen­tences in con­nec­tion with the 1992 shoot­ing deaths of an elder­ly white cou­ple in Rowan County. Evidence of sig­nif­i­cant mis­con­duct emerged in Mr. Chambers’ case, and pros­e­cu­tors ulti­mate­ly con­ced­ed that this evi­dence taint­ed the fair­ness of Mr. Chambers’ death sen­tence and led to his resen­tenc­ing. According to his coun­sel, Mr. Chambers’ tri­al was also infect­ed with racism. During jury selec­tion, pros­e­cu­tors exclud­ed sev­er­al poten­tial Black jurors from the jury, and their voir dire notes indi­cate that race was con­sid­ered in these removals — a direct vio­la­tion of U.S. Supreme Court prece­dent estab­lished in Batson v. Kentucky (1986).

It was dis­cov­ered by appel­late coun­sel that one of Mr. Chambers’ jurors, dur­ing tri­al, dis­cussed the case with her pas­tor and relied on his advice to con­vince oth­er jurors to vote to sen­tence Mr. Chambers to death. Jurors are not per­mit­ted to con­sid­er any evi­dence out­side of the tri­al record. Counsel for Mr. Chambers also notes oth­er con­cerns: sup­pressed evi­dence and junk sci­ence includ­ing mis­lead­ing DNA evi­dence, fin­ger­print, and shoeprint evi­dence that they believe would not be admis­si­ble in court today, as well as con­cerns with whether Mr. Chambers is a per­son with intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty and thus should be inel­i­gi­ble for a death sen­tence under the U.S. Supreme Court’s deci­sion in Atkins v. Virginia (2002). Mr. Chambers’ resen­tenc­ing comes short of a new tri­al; his coun­sel has indi­cat­ed they will con­tin­ue to fed­er­al­ly lit­i­gate his Batson claims in efforts to secure a new and fair tri­al for him.

As out­lined in a fil­ing with the North Carolina Supreme Court, pros­e­cu­tors relied on race-based ques­tions dur­ing voir dire ques­tion­ing, ask­ing a prospec­tive Black juror if she would be crit­i­cized by her ​“Black friends” if she vot­ed to con­vict and sen­tence to death a per­son of the same race. Potential juror Melody Hall replied that while she would be crit­i­cized, it would not be an issue in her deter­mi­na­tion of a sen­tence. Prosecutors asked white jurors if the ​“racial sit­u­a­tion,” i.e., a Black defen­dant on tri­al for killing white peo­ple, would be an issue if they did not find Mr. Chambers guilty. These jurors answered sim­i­lar­ly, yet pros­e­cu­tors exclud­ed only Ms. Hall, not the white jurors. The tri­al court denied defense counsel’s Batson objec­tions and allowed the pros­e­cu­tion to exclude half a dozen poten­tial Black jurors. As a result, the jury ulti­mate­ly seat­ed to decide Mr. Chambers guilt and sen­tence was near­ly all white.

The Death Penalty Information Center has iden­ti­fied near­ly 70 cap­i­tal cas­es in 16 states in which a court vacat­ed a con­vic­tion or death sen­tences based on race dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selec­tion. DPI’s data­base illus­trates geo­graph­i­cal dis­par­i­ties in Batson relief. Alabama alone accounts for 23 race dis­crim­i­na­tion rever­sals (35%). Philadelphia County, where District Attorney Jack McMahon trained pros­e­cu­tors how to ille­gal­ly exclude poten­tial jurors of col­or, has the sec­ond-high­est rate of Batson rever­sals, at five. Texas and Florida, the two states with the high­est num­ber of death sen­tences in the mod­ern era, have col­lec­tive­ly had few­er than five Batson rever­sals, despite sim­i­lar evi­dence of sys­temic race dis­crim­i­na­tion. Many states — includ­ing North Carolina — have not seen a sin­gle death-sen­tenced per­son win Batson relief based on race discrimination.

In a 2020 report from the Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL), the orga­ni­za­tion notes that ​“North Carolina’s mod­ern death penal­ty is the fruit of a racist past.” Looking at the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem, Racist Roots: Origins of North Carolina’s Death Penalty, found that ​“the death penal­ty con­tin­ues to achieve exact­ly what it was intend­ed to do when it began: Punish the pow­er­less and cement the suprema­cy of the pow­er­ful. It remains the ulti­mate sym­bol of state con­trol.” The report sup­ports this state­ment by going in-depth into an array of facts sur­round­ing the racial-break­down of the state’s use of the death penal­ty. Racist Roots found that near­ly half of death row pris­on­ers at the time, like Mr. Chambers, had been tried by an all-white jury or a jury with just one per­son of col­or. People of col­or make up less than 30% of North Carolina’s pop­u­la­tion but 60% of its death row. The report empha­sizes that the state’s death penal­ty sys­tem ​“makes Black men the face of vio­lence, while obscur­ing the fact that through­out American his­to­ry, white peo­ple car­ried out a sus­tained cam­paign of racial terror.”