Back in 2009, the North Carolina legislature passed the Racial Justice Act, which allows death-row inmates to challenge their sentences if they can prove racial bias resulted in them receiving the death penalty. If a judge finds that there is indeed evidence of bias, the death sentence is automatically commuted to life without parole. The state legislature tried to repeal the bill last year after several of the state's district attorneys claimed it was bogging them down. However, Governor Bev Perdue vetoed the repeal attempt in December, and the now-Republican controlled legislature didn't have enough votes to override it.
Now, we have proof of just how necessary this bill is. Back in 1994, Marcus Raymond Robinson of Fayetteville was sentenced to death for the 1991 murder of a 17-year-old high school student. Robinson is black; his victim was white. Robinson appealed, claiming that prosecutors deliberately kept blacks off the jury. Earlier today, a judge sided with Robinson--the first time that a death sentence has been thrown out as a result of the Racial Justice Act.
Cumberland County Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks announced his decision this morning, finding that race played a significant factor in selection of a jury during Robinson's 1994 trial.
Weeks found that prosecutors intentionally discriminated against potential jurors who were black. In his strongly worded ruling, the judge said that being black does predict whether prosecutors in North Carolina will dismiss certain people from jury pools.
Read Weeks' full ruling
here.
In filing his appeal, Robinson's lawyers relied heavily on a study by the Michigan State College of Law. MSU examined 173 capital cases from 1990 to 2010, and found that prosecutors struck blacks from the jury pool at more than double the rate of other races. I haven't been able to find a link to the study as of yet--any help in finding it would be most welcome.
At Robinson's trial, blacks were struck off the jury pool 3.5 times more than potential jurors from other races. He was convicted by a jury comprised of nine whites, one Native American and two blacks.
In essence, Cumberland County prosecutors threw all their eggs in one basket when they argued in favor of letting Robinson's death sentence stand--they claimed that the MSU study was flawed. However, if I'm reading the ruling right, prosecutors' case was significantly undermined by one of their own expert witnesses, a statistician. Not only did he admit that his statistical models showing an insignificant correlation between race and peremptory strikes were poorly constructed, but he testified that he reached many of the same conclusions as the MSU study when he did his own examination of the rates at which blacks get bounced from jury pools.
Weeks found the MSU study to be credible, saying in his ruling that there was significant evidence that being black makes it more likely that you will be struck from a North Carolina jury pool. He also found that much of Robinson's evidence went unanswered by prosecutors.
This ruling will almost certainly be appealed, but for the moment stands as one of the landmark state court cases in recent history.
1:53 PM PT: Read the MSU study here (via moviemeiser76 in the comments).