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."
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
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:
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;
