North Carolina Racial Justice Act Hearing Concludes in Hasson Bacote Case

On Friday, March 8, 2024 a Johnston County trial court concluded a historic hearing regarding the claims of Hasson Bacote, a death-sentenced prisoner in North Carolina, that racial discrimination in jury selection played a role in his 2009 capital sentencing. The case, which is being reviewed pursuant to North Carolina’s 2009 Racial Justice Act (RJA), could have implications for more than 100 other death row prisoners who have pending claims under the Act.

The evidence presented by Mr. Bacote’s legal team during two weeks of testimony showed a clear and persistent pattern of racial bias in jury selection. They argued that racial bias has historically denied people of color the opportunity to serve on capital juries and led to a disproportionate number of extreme sentences for Black men, including Mr. Bacote. 

In connection with the litigation, North Carolina disclosed 680,000 documents pertaining to data on capital punishment since 1980, including information on jury selection. The data show that potential Black jurors were four times more likely to be eliminated from a jury pool in Johnston County and ten times more likely to be eliminated by former District Attorney Gregory Butler, the prosecutor in Mr. Bacote’s case.

Henderson Hill, one of Mr. Bacote’s lawyers, argued that the racism in North Carolina’s death penalty was “so clear, it’s blinding.” “We have white prosecutors standing in front of overwhelmingly white juries comparing Black defendants facing the death penalty to animals – ‘mad dogs,’ ‘hyenas,’ ‘predators of the African plain,’” he said.  

Mr. Butler denied the allegations that race played any role in Mr. Bacote’s case. “And, no, I was not calling them animals. There was no racial intent on my part whatsoever,” he said.

The RJA was passed by North Carolina in 2009, allowing persons sentenced to death to challenge their sentences based on the role race played in their sentencing and jury selection. Then, in 2013, the Act was fully repealed under Governor Pat McCrory.

The repeal was a response to the reaction of some North Carolina legislators, who complained that the RJA was an indirect way to abolish the death penalty in the state and caused delays in executions. The legislature’s initial attempt to repeal it in 2011 was vetoed by the then-Governor Bev Perdue. But cases that had already been filed under the RJA prior to the repeal, including that of Mr. Bacote, continue to proceed.

Serving on a jury is a fundamental constitutional right of United States citizens. Nonetheless, racial disparities in jury selections are not endemic to North Carolina. For many decades, and across the U.S., Black people were denied the right to serve on juries. The U.S. Supreme Court decision in Batson v. Kentucky (1986) confirmed that racial discrimination in jury selection is illegal, but the practice has continued.  

Mr. Bacote is represented by the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, and North Carolina Attorney Jay Ferguson. 

Superior Court Judge Wayland J. Sermons, Jr. is expected to issue his ruling in Mr. Bacote’s case later this Spring.