Lawyers for Hasson Jamaal Bacote, a North Carolina man on death row, argued on Wednesday that his 2009 jury selection was racially biased, and part of a long state history of racially biased jury selection, Courthouse News reports. Bacote is one of 136 prisoners sentenced to death in North Carolina who are trying to convert their death sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole, through the North Carolina Racial Justice Act. Bacote’s lawyers argued that people of color have routinely been denied the opportunity to serve on capital juries and that the result is a much higher rate of Black defendants, like Bacote, sent to death row. His lawyers emphasized their points with pie charts showing that all Black individuals with capital sentences in Johnston County have all been given the death penalty, while only 45% of white offenders have been sentenced to death.
Bacote’s hearing on Wednesday came through the North Carolina Racial Justice Act, which passed in 2009, with the intention of allowing prisoners who believed race was a significant factor in imposing the death penalty to attempt to vacate their death sentence. The act was repealed in 2013, by then-governor Pat McCroy, who said that it effectively halted the death penalty. But in 2020, the state Supreme Court found that the part of McCrory’s repeal that retroactively voided claims under the act was unconstitutional.
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