“He Looks a Little Like the Defendant”: A Closer Look at the History of Racial Bias in Jury Selection

As clos­ing argu­ments of his tri­al began in Johnston County, North Carolina, Hasson Bacote watched as Assistant District Attorney Gregory Butler urged the jury to sen­tence him to death. Mr. Bacote, a Black man, had been con­vict­ed of fatal­ly shoot­ing 18-year-old Anthony Surles dur­ing a rob­bery when Mr. Bacote was just 21 years old. Mr. Bacote admit­ted he had fired a sin­gle shot out of a trail­er, but said he did not know that he hit any­one. Hasson Bacote is a thug: cold-blood­ed and with­out remorse,” Mr. Butler told the jury, which con­sist­ed of 10 white peo­ple and 2 Black peo­ple. Mr. Butler had struck poten­tial Black jurors from Mr. Bacote’s tri­al at over three times the rate of white jurors. The jury vot­ed to sen­tence Mr. Bacote to death.

In 2009, the same year Mr. Bacote was sen­tenced, North Carolina leg­is­la­tors passed the Racial Justice Act (RJA), which gave death row pris­on­ers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to prove that racial bias was a fac­tor in their case — and win a life with­out parole sen­tence if suc­cess­ful. Mr. Bacote’s legal team quick­ly applied for RJA relief, but in 2013, the leg­is­la­ture repealed the RJA and attempt­ed to nul­li­fy the more than 130 claims that had already been filed. After years of lit­i­ga­tion, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that the repeal of the RJA was not retroac­tive and the claims could move for­ward. Mr. Bacote’s claim was the first to pro­ceed to an evidentiary hearing. 

At the hear­ing in 2024, Mr. Bacote’s attor­neys pre­sent­ed sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis show­ing that poten­tial Black jurors in Johnston County were four times more like­ly to be struck than white jurors — and ten times more like­ly to be struck if Mr. Butler was the pros­e­cu­tor. They also high­light­ed Mr. Butler’s clos­ing argu­ment in anoth­er tri­al, where Mr. Butler called the Black defen­dant and his code­fen­dants wild dogs,” hye­nas,” and preda­tors of the African plain.” Mr. Butler, now retired, tes­ti­fied in the hear­ing that he nev­er, ever struck a juror with­out hav­ing race-neutral reasons.”

But before the court issued its deci­sion on Mr. Bacote’s RJA claim, out­go­ing Governor Roy Cooper com­mut­ed the death sen­tences of fif­teen peo­ple to life with­out parole on December 31, 2024, his last day in office. Mr. Bacote was the first name on the list. Gov. Cooper did not spec­i­fy why he grant­ed clemen­cy in each indi­vid­ual case, but not­ed that the poten­tial influ­ence of race, such as the race of the defen­dant and vic­tim, com­po­si­tion of the jury pool and the final jury, and evi­dence and tes­ti­mo­ny offered at tri­al” played a key role in his deci­sion. Thirteen of the fif­teen men who received clemen­cy from Governor Cooper are Black. 

In February 2025, the RJA court ruled in Mr. Bacote’s favor, find­ing that racial bias per­vad­ed his and oth­er death sen­tences in North Carolina, a state with a long his­to­ry of racial vio­lence and ter­ror. In Johnston County, Black defen­dants like Mr. Bacote 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 court wrote. The court fur­ther rec­og­nized Mr. Butler’s his­to­ry of den­i­grat­ing Black defen­dants in thin­ly veiled racist terms.” The court found sta­tis­ti­cal dis­par­i­ties in the entire pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al dis­trict encom­pass­ing Mr. Bacote’s case; pros­e­cu­tors there struck Black jurors at near­ly twice the rate of all oth­er jurors. The court also not­ed exam­ples from 18 oth­er coun­ties where pros­e­cu­tors had intro­duced offen­sive stereo­types and char­ac­ter­i­za­tions, com­ment­ed on skin shade and body types, den­i­grat­ed women, and/​or used ani­mal imagery” to describe jurors; used prox­ies” for race to mark jurors, such as neigh­bor­hood, group mem­ber­ship, atten­dance at a his­tor­i­cal­ly Black col­lege, or fol­low­ing Black-owned media; offered dis­parate or out­right false rea­sons for strik­ing Black jurors; or oth­er­wise inject­ed racial bias into voir dire pro­ceed­ings. This rul­ing impli­cates over 100 pend­ing RJA claims in North Carolina and speaks to the per­va­sive nature of cap­i­tal jury dis­crim­i­na­tion through­out American history. 

The Long History of Racial Bias in Jury Selection 

Racial bias in jury selec­tion has been a fea­ture of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment through­out American his­to­ry. Only white men were legal­ly per­mit­ted to serve on juries for the first eighty-odd years of the repub­lic. Following the Civil War, new legal pro­tec­tions, includ­ing the Fourteenth Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1875, affirmed the legal right of Black men to serve on juries. In Strauder v. West Virginia (1880), the United States Supreme Court held that racial dis­crim­i­na­tion against jurors of col­or cre­ates a brand upon them, affixed by law; an asser­tion of their infe­ri­or­i­ty, and a stim­u­lant to that race prej­u­dice which is an imped­i­ment to secur­ing to indi­vid­u­als of the race that equal jus­tice which the law aims to secure to all others.” 

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