SMITHFIELD, N.C. — A judge has ruled that racial discrimination affected the exclusion of Black individuals from the jury pool and the application of the death penalty during the 2009 trial of a Black man in North Carolina. This decision highlights what the judge describes as “glaring” patterns of racial bias in the prosecutorial district surrounding the capital.
Hasson Bacote is one of 15 inmates on death row whose sentences were changed to life in prison without parole last year by Governor Roy Cooper in one of his final official acts. While this ruling holds no legal implications for Bacote personally, it may provide support for other inmates facing similar issues, according to Gretchen M. Engel, who leads the Center for Death Penalty Litigation.
Alongside the issues that compromised Bacote’s trial, Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons Jr. discovered that racial bias also influenced jury selection and sentencing in additional cases from Johnston County. Notably, he observed that Black defendants in capital punishment cases were sentenced to death 100% of the time, contrasting sharply with the 45% rate for white defendants.
Thus far, none of these Black inmates from Johnston County have been executed, and the state of North Carolina has not performed any executions since 2006.
The judge indicated that race played a “significant role” in the decision-making process regarding death penalty pursuits and jury selection, referencing other cases handled by Assistant District Attorney Gregory Butler as well as various death penalty cases within the same prosecutorial area, which at that time included Harnett and Lee counties.
In Bacote’s trial, Butler excluded 75% of potential Black jurors while only dismissing 23% of non-Black jurors. Additionally, the likelihood of Black jurors being removed from the selection pool through peremptory challenges was more than ten times greater than for non-Black individuals, as noted by Sermons.
Despite Butler’s claims that he never dismissed jurors for racially motivated reasons, the judge found those assertions unconvincing. For instance, when Butler justified the removal of five Black jurors based on their opposition to the death penalty, similar concerns expressed by white jurors were overlooked, with many using strikingly similar language, according to Sermons.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s 1986 ruling emphasized that excluding jurors based on race violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, mandating equal treatment for individuals in comparable situations. Nonetheless, proving bias in jury selection is often a complex challenge.
The North Carolina Department of Justice, which defended the state in Bacote’s case, has indicated their intention to appeal the ruling, as relayed by spokesperson Nazneen Ahmed on behalf of Attorney General Jeff Jackson.
Bacote contested his death sentence under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act of 2009, which allowed inmates to receive life sentences instead of death if they could demonstrate that racial bias influenced their sentencing. Although the law was repealed in 2013, the state Supreme Court has determined that it remains applicable for any inmate with a pending Racial Justice Act case at the time of the repeal.
During a two-week hearing last fall, Judge Sermons reviewed evidence, including statistical analyses related to the implementation of the death penalty in North Carolina, particularly in Johnston County. In the ruling issued on Friday, he concluded that the evidence presented did not substantiate that racial disparities significantly impacted death penalty cases across the state.
