North Carolina Supreme Court Strikes Down Racial Justice Act Repeal, Permits Race Challenges by 140 Death-Row Prisoners

The North Carolina Supreme Court has struck down the state legislature’s attempt­ed retroac­tive repeal of the state’s Racial Justice Act (RJA), restor­ing the rights of approx­i­mate­ly 140 death-row pris­on­ers to seek redress of death sen­tences that they had claimed were sub­stan­tial­ly affect­ed by racial bias.

The Court issued its rul­ings in the cas­es of death-row pris­on­ers Andrew Ramseur (pic­tured, left) and Rayford Burke (pic­tured, right) on June 5, 2020, hold­ing that ​“the retroac­tive appli­ca­tion of the RJA Repeal vio­lates the pro­hi­bi­tion against ex post fac­to laws under the United States and North Carolina Constitutions.” It remand­ed their cas­es to the tri­al court to con­duct hear­ings to deter­mine whether their death sen­tences vio­lat­ed the Racial Justice Act. If the defen­dants win their chal­lenges, they will be resen­tenced to life without parole. 

The court also inval­i­dat­ed the retroac­tive appli­ca­tion of ear­li­er leg­isla­tive amend­ments that had lim­it­ed the types of evi­dence death-row pris­on­ers could use to prove that race had been a sub­stan­tial fac­tor in their death sen­tences. Those amend­ments, enact­ed in 2012 after death-row pris­on­er Marcus Robinson had over­turned his death sen­tence under the RJA, also vio­lat­ed state and fed­er­al pro­hi­bi­tions against ex post facto laws, the court ruled. 

Trial courts had over­turned the death sen­tences of four pris­on­ers under the RJA — Robinson, Tilmon Golphin, Christina Walters and Quintel Augustine — before the act was repealed. However, the North Carolina Supreme Court vacat­ed their sen­tence rever­sals to pro­vide pros­e­cu­tors an addi­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ty to present expert tes­ti­mo­ny to chal­lenge a statewide study of racial bias in jury selec­tion. Before those new hear­ings could take place, the leg­is­la­ture repealed the statute alto­geth­er and the tri­al courts can­celed the hear­ings and rein­stat­ed the pris­on­ers’ death sen­tences. Their chal­lenges to the rein­state­ment of their death sen­tences are still pend­ing before the North Carolina Supreme Court.

“We’re a nation of laws, and when peo­ple have tri­als, they have to be fair tri­als, and part of a fair tri­al is that you don’t get a harsh­er pun­ish­ment or a whiter jury because of the col­or of your skin,” said Gretchen Engel, Executive Director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL) and one of Burke’s attor­neys. ​“This is a momen­tous deci­sion that sends a clear mes­sage: Our state’s high­est court will not allow North Carolina to ignore evi­dence that racism has infect­ed the death penal­ty. This was also an urgent­ly need­ed deci­sion as our state and our nation con­front a long his­to­ry of racism. The death penal­ty is the apex of a crim­i­nal legal sys­tem that has failed peo­ple of color.”

“In light of decades, if not cen­turies, of mis­treat­ment and bru­tal­iza­tion of Black cit­i­zens at the hands of America’s crim­i­nal sys­tem, today’s deci­sion to take the death penal­ty off the table when there is evi­dence of racial bias is just one small but impor­tant step toward achiev­ing the broad-based reform need­ed in North Carolina, and across the coun­try,” said Henderson Hill, an attor­ney with the ACLU who rep­re­sents RJA defen­dants. ​“It’s some­thing to cel­e­brate, but also a reminder that we must keep work­ing for justice.”

North Carolina’s land­mark 2009 Racial Justice Act per­mit­ted death-row pris­on­ers to chal­lenge their death sen­tences by pre­sent­ing evi­dence, includ­ing sta­tis­ti­cal stud­ies, that racial bias was a sig­nif­i­cant fac­tor that con­tributed to their death sen­tences. In the four years fol­low­ing the law’s pas­sage, more than 130 pris­on­ers filed such challenges. 

The law prompt­ed a study of jury selec­tion in the state that revealed that pros­e­cu­tors sys­tem­i­cal­ly exer­cised their dis­cre­tionary strikes to exclude Black prospec­tive jurors from serv­ing in cap­i­tal cas­es. The study reviewed 20 years of cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions, find­ing racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry jury selec­tion prac­tices that exhib­it­ed ​“remark­able con­sis­ten­cy across time and juris­dic­tion.” Statewide and in most North Carolina coun­ties, pros­e­cu­tors peremp­to­ri­ly struck more than half of all Black jurors, while accept­ing three-quar­ters of all oth­er jurors. The prob­a­bil­i­ty that this pat­tern of dis­crim­i­na­to­ry strikes would occur by chance, the study found, was less than one in ten trillion.

After Robinson won his RJA claim in the tri­al court, con­trol of the leg­is­la­ture and gov­er­nor­ship changed par­ties. In 2012, the now-Republican leg­is­la­ture retroac­tive­ly amend­ed the statute to scale back the cir­cum­stances in which relief could be grant­ed. The Amended RJA barred statewide evi­dence of dis­crim­i­na­tion, lim­it­ing sta­tis­ti­cal proof of dis­crim­i­na­tion to cas­es tried in the coun­ty or judi­cial dis­trict in which the crime had occurred. It also con­strict­ed the time peri­od in which evi­dence of his­tor­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion could be assessed, lim­it­ing proof to cas­es tried in the ten years before the crime and two years after the impo­si­tion of sen­tence. The new law also required the pris­on­er to present some evi­dence of dis­crim­i­na­tion in his or her par­tic­u­lar case, in addi­tion to any statistical evidence.

After Golphin, Robinson, Walters, and Augustine won their claims under the new stan­dard, the leg­is­la­ture retroac­tive­ly repealed the entire Racial Justice Act.

Both Burke and Ramseur, who are Black, had filed RJA claims pre­sent­ing dis­turb­ing evi­dence of racial bias at their tri­als, in addi­tion to the sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence of sys­temic statewide dis­crim­i­na­tion in jury selec­tion. Both men were con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death by all-white juries. During clos­ing argu­ments at Burke’s 1993 tri­al, the pros­e­cu­tor referred to Burke as ​“a big, Black bull.” At Ramseur’s 2010 tri­al, sher­iffs blocked off sev­er­al rows of seat­ing behind the defense table with yel­low crime scene tape. When his lawyers argued that the tape made Ramseur appear dan­ger­ous, the judge refused their motion to remove it, say­ing, ​“I’ll let the sher­iffs han­dle the secu­ri­ty. That’s the way they do it here, and that’s the way it will be done.” The tape blocked the seats where the defendant’s fam­i­ly usu­al­ly sits, forc­ing Ramseur’s fam­i­ly mem­bers to sit in the back of the court­room, while the white fam­i­ly mem­bers of the vic­tim sat in the front row behind the prosecution.