North Carolina Court Reverses Racial Justice Act Ruling, Orders New Hearings

The North Carolina Supreme Court has reversed the his­toric rul­ings of a Cumberland County, N.C. tri­al court that had over­turned the death sen­tences of four North Carolina death-row pris­on­ers under the state’s Racial Justice Act. Ruling entire­ly on pro­ce­dur­al grounds, the state’s high court expressed no opin­ion on the low­er court’s fact find­ings that North Carolina pros­e­cu­tors had engaged in a decades-long prac­tice of inten­tion­al race dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selec­tion in capital cases. 

In April 2012, Superior Court Judge Gregory Weeks over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Marcus Robinson (pic­tured, left),holding that ​“race was a mate­ri­al­ly, prac­ti­cal­ly and sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor in the deci­sion to exer­cise peremp­to­ry chal­lenges dur­ing jury selec­tion by pros­e­cu­tors” at the time of Robinson’s tri­al. After a sec­ond hear­ing in the cas­es of Quintel Augustine, Christina Walters, and Tilmon Golphin, the court again found that ​“a wealth of evi­dence show[ed] the per­sis­tent, per­va­sive, and dis­tort­ing role of race in jury selec­tion through­out North Carolina.” 

After the low­er court over­turned these death sen­tences and imposed sen­tences of life with­out parole, the North Carolina leg­is­la­ture repealed the Racial Justice Act law. In its rul­ing, the North Carolina Supreme Court said that the tri­al court should have giv­en pros­e­cu­tors more time to pre­pare for the evi­den­tiary hear­ing at which the pris­on­ers pre­sent­ed a com­pre­hen­sive sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis of North Carolina’s exer­cise of dis­cre­tionary strikes in cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions over a 20-year peri­od. Writing that ​“fun­da­men­tal fair­ness” required that the state be giv­en ​“an ade­quate oppor­tu­ni­ty to pre­pare for this unusu­al and com­plex pro­ceed­ing,” the court invit­ed both sides to present addi­tion­al sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence at a new hearing. 

In the sec­ond case, the court also said the three pris­on­ers’ Racial Justice Act claims should have been heard sep­a­rate­ly. Executions have been stayed indef­i­nite­ly in North Carolina pend­ing res­o­lu­tion of the Racial Justice Act lit­i­ga­tion and will remain on hold.

Defense lawyers expressed con­fi­dence that they would pre­vail ​“no mat­ter how many hear­ings are held or stud­ies com­plet­ed.” Jay Ferguson, one of the lawyers for the inmates, said: ​“The evi­dence of racial bias in jury selec­tion is sim­ply over­whelm­ing and unde­ni­able. All this deci­sion will do is add more delays and cost the state mil­lions to con­duct new stud­ies and hold new hear­ings. We will be throw­ing more tax­pay­er mon­ey into a hope­less­ly bro­ken death penalty.”