RACE: North Carolina Judge Overturns Death Sentence Under Racial Justice Act

On April 20, North Carolina Superior Court Judge Gregory Weeks issued an his­toric rul­ing under the state’s Racial Justice Act find­ing inten­tion­al bias by the state in select­ing juries for death penal­ty cas­es. In what may be the first rul­ing of its kind in the coun­try, the court held 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 Marcus Robinson’s (pic­tured) tri­al. Robinson’s death sen­tence was reduced to life without parole. 

Earlier this year, lawyers for Robinson pre­sent­ed sta­tis­ti­cal stud­ies show­ing that race played an improp­er role in jury selec­tion in cap­i­tal cas­es across the state. The evi­dence includ­ed find­ings from a study con­duct­ed by law pro­fes­sors at Michigan State University that con­clud­ed that qual­i­fied black jurors were struck from juries at more than twice the rate of qual­i­fied white jurors in the state’s 173 cap­i­tal cas­es between 1990 – 2010. Judge Weeks said that the dis­par­i­ty was strong enough ​“as to sup­port an infer­ence of inten­tion­al dis­crim­i­na­tion.” Many oth­er North Carolina inmates have also chal­lenged their death sen­tences on similar grounds.

North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act allows review­ing courts to over­turn death sen­tences based on sta­tis­ti­cal evi­dence of racial bias. 

April 22 will mark the 25^th anniver­sary of the Supreme Court’s deci­sion in McCleskey v. Kemp in which the Court reject­ed (5 – 4) a claim of racial bias based on a sophis­ti­cat­ed sta­tis­ti­cal study of the death penal­ty in Georgia. The Court held that in order to suc­ceed under an Equal Protection claim the defen­dant had to show he was per­son­al­ly dis­crim­i­nat­ed against in the course of the pros­e­cu­tion, and mere­ly show­ing a dis­turb­ing pat­tern of racial dis­par­i­ties over a long peri­od of time was not suf­fi­cient to prove racial bias in his case. The Court also reject­ed the claim that Georgia’s death penal­ty sys­tem was arbi­trary as shown by the same stud­ies. Justice Powell, writ­ing for the major­i­ty, indi­cat­ed that leg­is­la­tion such as that passed in North Carolina, could make a dif­fer­ence in the assess­ment of such claims.