Sunday, February 9, 2025

Hassan Bacote: North Carolina; Death Row: Major (Welcome) Development: NBC (Senior Reporter Erik Ortiz) reports that a judge has found that racial bias tainted the jury selection in the case of this Black man who was sentenced to death in 2009 by 10 white and two Black jurors for his role in a felony, noting that: "Bacote’s is the lead case to test the scope of the Racial Justice Act of 2009, a groundbreaking state law that allows condemned inmates to seek resentencing if they can show racial bias played a role in their cases. Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons Jr. found Bacote did prove discrimination in his case, a ruling that is expected to have a far-reaching effect on many of the other 122 inmates facing the death chamber by paving the way for them to successfully challenge their sentences, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped to represent Bacote.",



PUBLISHER'S NOTE: "It may not be  something that can be tested in a laboratory, like DNA, but the taint of  racism and its ugly consequences (including death) as this monumental case demonstrates, can be recognized and expunged in the courtroom. I learned this after being asked, because of my work on the Charles Smith cases,  to provide some assistance to Rodrick's Crawford, a young Black  man convicted, in Louisiana,    of murdering his young son Rodericus and sentenced to death.  Check out this passage from a  previous post by myself and Marlene Belliveau, another Canadian assisting Rodricus Crawford, at the link below:

"So how did Louisiana’s prosecutors get the jury to convict Crawford  - apart from down playing the medical cause of death?  Apart from doing everything they could to keep  African-Americans  off the jury,  they tried to present Crawford as a man who would kill – stressing the fact that he smoked marijuana,  had not married his child’s mother, lived at home, and was unemployed.  The final nail was hammered into Crawford’s coffin, so to speak, when, during the penalty phase of the trial,  prosecutor Dale Cox  invoked Christ in a bid to persuade the jurors to allow the state to kill Crawford.   "He (Jesus Christ) said, to the adult, who would harm one of these, 'one of these' referring to small children, Woe be unto you, who would harm one of these,'" Cox told the jurors.  "Now, this is the Jesus Christ of the New Testament. 'It would be better if though you were never born. You shall have a millstone cast around your neck and you will be thrown into the sea.'" Rodricus Crawford did not have much of a chance after that." 

Racism, anyone? The decision in the Bacote case should go a long way to keep the taint of racism out of America's courtrooms. Subject of course, to the appeal process. Will the State of North Carolina appeal - and fight for the right to retain racism on capitol cases - and any other cases - in its courts? We're watching!


Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith  Blog.

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QUOTE OF THE DAY:  ""What we saw in Mr. Bacote's case is that the more we look for evidence of discrimination in our state's capital jury selection system, the more we find," Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU's Capital Punishment Project, said in a statement. "This ruling creates a path to justice for the hundred plus individuals who have filed claims and whose cases were similarly tainted with bias."

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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "During a hearing before Sermons last year, Bacote’s lawyers said a history and pattern of racial discrimination in picking juries in Johnston County, southeast of Raleigh, compromised his capital case and others. They argued that local prosecutors at the time of Bacote’s trial were nearly two times more likely to exclude people of color from jury service than to exclude whites, and in Bacote’s case, prosecutors chose to strike prospective Black jurors from the jury pool at more than three times the rate of prospective white jurors.

Ashley Burrell, senior counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, which is also helping to represent Bacote, said at the hearing that a prosecutor during closing arguments at Bacote’s trial referred to him as a “thug, coldhearted and without remorse.” Such language “taps into this false narrative of the super predator myth,” Burrell said."

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STORY: "Judge finds racial bias tainted jury selection in Black man's death row case," by Reporter Erik Ortiz, published by NBC Digital, on February 7, 2025.  (Erik Ortiz is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital focusing on racial injustice and social inequality.)

SUB-HEADING: "North Carolina inmate Hassan Bacote was sentenced to death in 2009 by a nearly all-white jury. A hearing last year focused on claims of racial discrimination in capital cases."


GIST: "A North Carolina judge ruled Friday that a Black defendant’s capital trial was undermined by allegations of racial bias during jury selection, potentially opening the door to death row inmates throughout the state getting resentenced.

The decision follows a landmark hearing last year brought by Hasson Bacote, a Black man who was sentenced to death in 2009 by 10 white and two Black jurors for his role in a felony murder.

Bacote’s is the lead case to test the scope of the Racial Justice Act of 2009, a groundbreaking state law that allows condemned inmates to seek resentencing if they can show racial bias played a role in their cases.

Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons Jr. found Bacote did prove discrimination in his case, a ruling that is expected to have a far-reaching effect on many of the other 122 inmates facing the death chamber by paving the way for them to successfully challenge their sentences, according to the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped to represent Bacote.

"What we saw in Mr. Bacote's case is that the more we look for evidence of discrimination in our state's capital jury selection system, the more we find," Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU's Capital Punishment Project, said in a statement. "This ruling creates a path to justice for the hundred plus individuals who have filed claims and whose cases were similarly tainted with bias."

Bacote, 38, had been seeking to have his death sentence changed to life in prison as a result of the judge’s ruling. But that happened on Dec. 31, when outgoing Gov. Roy Cooper commuted the death sentences of 15 inmates, including Bacote’s, to life in prison without parole.

While Cooper insisted that “no single factor was determinative in the decision on any one case,” among the factors considered were the “potential influence of race, such as the race of the defendant and victim, composition of the jury pool and the final jury.”

Cooper’s act of clemency for Bacote provides a reprieve from death row.

"When my death sentence was commuted by Gov. Cooper, I felt enormous relief that the burden of the death penalty — and all of the stress and anxiety that go with it — were lifted off my shoulders," Bacote said after the ruling. "I am grateful to the court for having the courage to recognize that racial bias affected my case and so many others."

Nazneen Ahmed, a spokeswoman for state Attorney General Jeff Jackson, said his office intends to appeal Sermons' ruling.

When the Racial Justice Act was first signed into law, nearly every person on death row, including both Black and white prisoners, filed for reviews, according to The Associated Press. The law was later repealed in 2013 by then-Gov. Pat McCrory, who believed it created a “loophole to avoid the death penalty,” but those who initially filed challenges could still pursue their litigation.

Bacote was charged with murder along with two others in the 2007 fatal shooting of Anthony Surles, 18, during a home robbery attempt when Bacote was 20. The other two defendants in the case were convicted on lesser charges and later released from prison.

During a hearing before Sermons last year, Bacote’s lawyers said a history and pattern of racial discrimination in picking juries in Johnston County, southeast of Raleigh, compromised his capital case and others. They argued that local prosecutors at the time of Bacote’s trial were nearly two times more likely to exclude people of color from jury service than to exclude whites, and in Bacote’s case, prosecutors chose to strike prospective Black jurors from the jury pool at more than three times the rate of prospective white jurors.

Ashley Burrell, senior counsel at the Legal Defense Fund, which is also helping to represent Bacote, said at the hearing that a prosecutor during closing arguments at Bacote’s trial referred to him as a “thug, coldhearted and without remorse.”

Such language “taps into this false narrative of the super predator myth,” Burrell said.

While Bacote’s lawyers called on several historians, social scientists, statisticians and others to establish a case of racial bias on a systemic level, state prosecutors had questioned the stats used by Bacote’s legal team and how some of their experts could not testify specifically to his case.

If the test under the Racial Justice Act is “whether racism has existed in our state, then there is no need for a hearing in this case or any other case. But that’s not the question before this court,” state Department of Justice Attorney Jonathan Babb told the judge last year. “Rather, the question is whether this death sentence in this case was solely obtained on the basis of race. The defendant has not shown that his sentence was solely obtained on the basis of race.”

But Sermons on Friday disagreed, finding that prosecutors were more likely to strike Black jurors at a higher rate than white jurors at Bacote's trial and referenced biased terms, such as “thug,” that prosecutors used.

Former state Attorney General Josh Stein had led the charge to fight Bacote’s case last year. Stein has since won election as governor, replacing Cooper, a fellow Democrat, who was term-limited.

North Carolina has not executed anyone since 2006, in part due to legal disputes and difficulties obtaining lethal injection drugs.

Stein has expressed support for the death penalty while ensuring capital cases are free from racial discrimination. His office did not immediately respond Friday to a request for comment."

The entire story can be read at: 

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-rule-whether-racial-bias-tainted-jury-selection-black-mans-death-rcna190657


PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"  section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.

SEE BREAKDOWN OF  SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG,  AT THE LINK BELOW:  HL:


https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985


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FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."

Lawyer Radha Natarajan:

Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;


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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!


Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;

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William Woods? California: Reporter Mitch Smith reports in the New York Times that he went to jail for stealing someone's identity. But it was his all along, in a story sub-headed, "A decades-long theft of a man's identity raised questions about who gets believed in the justice system, and what happens when your name is taken."…The story begins in a courtroom where a man who has been William Woods for his entire life faced a man who had been known as William Woods for much of his.…"That hearing on Friday brought an end to what prosecutors called “a Kafkaesque plot that resulted in the false imprisonment, involuntary hospitalization and forced medication” of the real Mr. Woods. And it was the final step in the legal downfall of the impostor, whose true name is Matthew Keirans, and who spent decades building a middle-class life in Mr. Woods’s name before the truth began to unspool."



PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "More than five years ago, William Woods stood in another courtroom. He was the defendant, and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office did not believe he was who he said he was. Prosecutors believed he was Mr. Keirans. “There is an issue I need to raise with the court,” a California prosecutor said in 2019, according to a transcript. “As the court knows, this is an identity theft case. We filed it under Matthew Keirans because the named victim in this case is William Woods.” “That’s me,” Mr. Woods called out. “And I understand he’s insisting he’s William Woods,” the prosecutor continued. “I can prove it,” Mr. Woods told the judge. Mr. Woods was held without bail on charges that he had illegally tried to gain access to bank accounts that Mr. Keirans had opened in Mr. Woods’s name. At every step, Mr. Woods insisted that he was telling the truth about his identity. At every step, the system doubted him."

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STORY: "He went to jail for stealing someone's identity.  But it was his all along," by Reporter Mitch Smith, published by The New York Times, on February 3, 2025.

SUB-HEADING: "A decades-long theft oof a man's identity raised questions about who gets believed in the justice system, and what happens when your name is taken."


PHOTO CAPTION: "“I’m trying to go on and continue on and not to pull myself down, but bring myself back up,” said William Woods, who had his identity stolen for decades.


GIST: "In a beige-walled courtroom in eastern Iowa, a man who has been William Woods for his entire life faced a man who had been known as William Woods for much of his.

That hearing on Friday brought an end to what prosecutors called “a Kafkaesque plot that resulted in the false imprisonment, involuntary hospitalization and forced medication” of the real Mr. Woods. And it was the final step in the legal downfall of the impostor, whose true name is Matthew Keirans, and who spent decades building a middle-class life in Mr. Woods’s name before the truth began to unspool.

Seated at a table some 15 feet from Mr. Keirans, Mr. Woods told a federal judge of his yearslong ordeal, including the time that he was “sent to jail for nothing, for being myself.” A few minutes later, the judge, C.J. Williams, sentenced Mr. Keirans to 12 years in prison, saying that he had stolen Mr. Woods’s identity and “manipulated the criminal justice system to prosecute an innocent man.”


“What the victim was deprived of here was priceless,” Judge Williams said. “It’s freedom.”

It was a case that raised basic, painful questions about justice: What happens when your name is no longer your own? And whom does the system believe?


‘That’s Me’

More than five years ago, William Woods stood in another courtroom. He was the defendant, and the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office did not believe he was who he said he was. Prosecutors believed he was Mr. Keirans.

“There is an issue I need to raise with the court,” a California prosecutor said in 2019, according to a transcript. “As the court knows, this is an identity theft case. We filed it under Matthew Keirans because the named victim in this case is William Woods.”

“That’s me,” Mr. Woods called out.

“And I understand he’s insisting he’s William Woods,” the prosecutor continued.

“I can prove it,” Mr. Woods told the judge.

Mr. Woods was held without bail on charges that he had illegally tried to gain access to bank accounts that Mr. Keirans had opened in Mr. Woods’s name. At every step, Mr. Woods insisted that he was telling the truth about his identity. At every step, the system doubted him.


Mr. Woods, 56, had spent much of his adult life striving but struggling. Friendly and soft-spoken, he had often been homeless, bouncing between New Mexico and California and working as a hot dog vendor or making jewelry to get by.

He was consistent and clear when he talked about his identity in California courtrooms as he tried to fight the charges on the grounds that he really was the man whose name he was accused of stealing. But Mr. Woods made other remarks that seemed to amplify the doubts. In court appearances, transcripts show, he would sometimes interrupt the judge, talk about historical figures or assert that he had tried to warn the F.B.I. in advance of the Sept. 11 attacks.

When his court-appointed lawyer told a judge that “I do not believe that he is competent,” it set off a series of events that led Mr. Woods to spend nearly five months in a California psychiatric hospital, in addition to the 428 days he spent in the county jail. The Los Angeles County Alternate Public Defender’s Office, which represented Mr. Woods, declined to comment.

Mr. Woods pleaded no contest in the bank account case when given the chance to be sentenced to the time he had already served. The doubts lingered. Prosecutors in Los Angeles asked the judge to order Mr. Woods not to use his name. When a judicial assistant noted that Mr. Woods insisted that he was in fact Mr. Woods, the judge overseeing that case pushed back.

“That’s because he was crazy,” the California judge said, according to the transcript of the proceeding in 2021.


Asked about that hearing, a spokesman for the Superior Court of Los Angeles County said the judge was prohibited from commenting, and that “judges rely on the parties before them to provide accurate information.”


‘Had I Known’


Halfway across the country, Matthew Keirans had established a quiet, successful life. He had married and raised a son whose surname is Woods. He lived in a middle-class neighborhood in suburban Milwaukee. He worked remotely for the University of Iowa’s hospital, where he was a high-level information technology administrator. He was, to everyone who knew him, William Woods.

“Had I known, we could and would have righted his wrongs decades earlier,” his wife wrote recently in a letter to the judge asking for leniency. “In all other aspects, Matt has been faithful.”

The details of how Mr. Keirans came to be known as Mr. Woods are fuzzy at best. Reached in jail, Mr. Keirans, now 58, declined to be interviewed, and his court-appointed lawyer did not respond to interview requests.

\

But court documents show that the two men’s lives intersected briefly in the late 1980s in Albuquerque when, prosecutors said, both men were homeless and working at hot dog carts. Mr. Woods believes his co-worker stole his wallet, learned his personal details and started using his identity. Federal prosecutors say they found no evidence of Mr. Keirans using his real name after 1988.

On Friday, Judge Williams said that Mr. Keirans’s motive was clear: He had adopted the false identity, the judge said, to escape responsibility from crimes he was accused of when he was young. Mr. Keirans had run away from home as a teenager, stolen a car and skipped court after an arrest, his plea agreement says.

In 1990, Mr. Keirans used Mr. Woods’s name to obtain a Colorado identification document while working as a newspaper carrier, he has admitted. In the years that followed, he used the Woods name for taxes, insurance, driver’s licenses, vehicle registrations, titles, deeds and bank accounts, the plea agreement says.

Mr. Keirans used Ancestry.com to find information about Mr. Woods’s family, which helped him obtain Mr. Woods’s real birth certificate from the state of Kentucky. When Mr. Keirans provided that document to investigators in Los Angeles, it helped convince them that he was the real Mr. Woods.


All of the records that Mr. Keirans accumulated establishing himself as William Woods left the real Mr. Woods unable to convince the authorities that he was who he said he was, though he, too, had identification cards with his real name.

Over the years, as Mr. Woods called police departments and banks and credit monitoring agencies trying to restore his name, he got nowhere. The authorities in California thought he was lying. When Mr. Woods contacted the police in Wisconsin, where Mr. Keirans lived, they appeared to accept Mr. Keirans’s version of events, records show, even relaying their findings to officials in Los Angeles at Mr. Keirans’s request.

It was not until Mr. Woods contacted the University of Iowa, where Mr. Keirans was employed in Mr. Woods’s name, that he found an investigator who took him seriously enough to find the truth.

“One of these two men was a victim of a crime,” Detective Ian Mallory of the university police said after court on Friday. “I did not know which one.”

After Mr. Woods set off the investigation in Iowa, Mr. Keirans worked to convince investigators that he was the real Mr. Woods, just as he had done with the authorities in California and Wisconsin when they pursued the case. Mr. Keirans kept following up with Detective Mallory, claiming that he was the true victim and that he needed the detective’s help.


But unlike the other investigators, Detective Mallory arranged for DNA tests of Mr. Woods’s father in Kentucky — whose identity was certain — and of Mr. Woods, who was then spending time at a shelter in Santa Monica, Calif. A comparison of the results showed that the California man was telling the truth.

Armed with the DNA evidence, Detective Mallory interviewed Mr. Keirans. He tripped up when asked the name of his father, and then confessed, according to court documents.

Image


‘The Truth’

Mr. Woods’s life changed last year when Mr. Keirans pleaded guilty.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office requested that Mr. Woods’s conviction be vacated. He was profiled in The Los Angeles Times. His inbox filled with emails from lawyers and journalists and filmmakers.

But life remained difficult, and money was hard to come by. Mr. Woods passed many days at a downtown Albuquerque barbershop, just blocks from where he worked as a hot dog vendor all those decades ago. He kept his food in the barbershop’s fridge, used the bathroom to shave and helped sweep up customers’ hair.


Mr. Woods slept some nights outside a truck stop beside the interstate, and got around town by bus. Still, he had his name back. He had hope.

As the months passed, Mr. Woods found an apartment and began a landscaping job that he enjoys. He started working with a law firm to seek compensation for his wrongful conviction in California. And last week, he traveled to Iowa, walked inside a courthouse and watched as the man who took his name learned his prison sentence.

“The truth is known,” Mr. Woods said afterward. “The truth is let out. And the truth is important.”

In that courtroom, everyone knew which man was William Woods."

The entire story can be read at: 


PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"  section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.

SEE BREAKDOWN OF  SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG,  AT THE LINK BELOW:  HL:


https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985


———————————————————————————————


FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."

Lawyer Radha Natarajan:

Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;


—————————————————————————————————


FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!


Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;

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