Entries tagged with “Tony Clark”
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
Jul 12, 2023
Doug Evans, the District Attorney Who Prosecuted Curtis Flowers Six Times, Retires
Doug Evans, the District Attorney who tried death row exoneree Curtis Flowers for murder six times, is retiring. Mr. Flowers received four death sentences, but each conviction was overturned when courts found that Evans had illegally excluded Black jurors from the jury pool. Mr. Flowers’ final conviction and death sentence was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in Flowers v. Mississippi. The Court found that Evans had unconstitutionally struck Black jurors from the venire because of their…