Racial bias tainted jury selection and death sentence for a Black man in North Carolina, judge says

SMITHFIELD, N.C. — Racial bias tainted the decision to strike Black people from the jury pool and to impose the death penalty in the 2009 trial of a Black man in North Carolina, a judge ruled on Friday, part of what he called ''glaring'' patterns of bias in a prosecutorial district outside the capital.

Hasson Bacote was among a group of 15 death row inmates whose sentences were commuted to life without parole last year by Gov. Roy Cooper in one of his final acts in office. That means the ruling won't make a legal difference for Bacote. However it could help several other death row inmates in similar circumstances, said Gretchen M. Engel, executive director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation.

In addition to the problems that prejudiced Bacote's trial, Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons Jr. found that racial bias tainted jury selection and sentencing in other Johnston County cases. Sermons found ''glaring'' bias in the fact that Black defendants in capital cases were sentenced to death 100% of the time while similar white defendants received a death sentence only 45% of the time.

None of those Black inmates in Johnston County have been executed, and North Carolina has not carried out an execution since 2006.

The judge said race was a ''significant factor'' in the decisions to seek the death penalty in the first place and in jury selection, when looking at other cases tried by Assistant District Attorney Gregory Butler as well as other death penalty cases in the same prosecutorial district, which at the time included Harnett and Lee counties.

In Bacote's case, Butler struck 75% of prospective Black jurors and only 23% of prospective non-Black jurors. In Butler's other cases, risk of removal from the jury pool by peremptory challenges was more than 10 times higher for Black candidates than for non-Black candidates, Sermons wrote.

Butler testified that he never struck a juror for a ''racial reason.'' Sermons found that unconvincing. In Bacote's case, for example, Butler explained his removal of five Black jurors by citing their opposition to the death penalty. However, ''Butler did not strike white jurors who expressed similar reservations, in some cases with nearly identical language,'' Sermons wrote.

The U.S. Supreme Court made clear in 1986 eliminating potential jurors merely because of their race violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, which requires that people in similar circumstances be treated the same. However, jury selection bias claims are often difficult to prove.

The North Carolina Department of Justice, whose lawyers represented the state in Bacote's case, have already ''notified the court that we intend to appeal,'' said Nazneen Ahmed, a spokesperson for Attorney General Jeff Jackson, who leads the department.

Bacote challenged his death sentence under North Carolina's 2009 Racial Justice Act, which allowed prisoners to receive life without parole if they could show that racial bias was the reason for their death sentence. The law was repealed in 2013, but the state Supreme Court has ruled that it still applies to any prisoner who had a Racial Justice Act case pending at the time of the repeal.

During a two-week hearing last fall, Sermons listened to evidence that included statistical studies of how the death penalty is implemented in North Carolina and Johnston County in particular. In his Friday ruling, the judge said the weight of the evidence did not prove that racial disparities prejudiced death penalty cases statewide.