Entries tagged with “Scottsboro Boys”
Mar 28, 2025
“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…
Issues
Aug 03, 2021
Equal Justice Initiative Releases Report on Racial Discrimination in Jury Selection
Racial bias in jury selection is compromising the “credibility, reliability, and integrity of the legal system,” and its effects are especially pronounced in death penalty cases, a new report from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) has found. EJI’s report, Race and the Jury: Illegal Discrimination in Jury Selection, released online July 27, 2021, places the continuing illegal exclusion of jurors of color in its historical context as “a continuing legacy of our history of racial injustice,”…