Will North Carolina abolish the death penalty?

North Carolina could also be abolishing the death penalty, all due to a black man.

This week in the North Carolina Trial Court in Johnston County “will hear death row inmate Hasson Bacote’s claims that racial discrimination in jury selection played a role in his death sentence.”

Bacote’s argument: at the 2009 trial indictment the team “prevented many qualified black jurors from serving on its jury.” He also claims that race not only played a mitigating role in his case – it also applied to each death penalty case in the state.

In addition to Bacote, 134 “inmates could potentially have their sentences commuted to life in prison following a landmark trial… that will test whether racial discrimination played a role in jury selection in criminal cases,” NBC News reports.

Bacote’s case was made possible by the Racial Justice Act (RJA), a law passed by the North Carolina State Legislature in 2009. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), RJA was “[a] a first-of-its-kind law that enables people on death row to challenge their sentence in the event that they can show that their race was an element during the trial.”

After he passed, over 100 prisoners stood before him death penalty submitted claims under the RJA. Then in 2013, just 4 years later, after regaining the majority, the GOP repealed the RJA. But, “[a]After a lengthy legal battle, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that each one lawsuits filed under the RJA before it was repealed could still proceed.”

ACLU senior adviser Henderson Hill said: “We believe the statistical evidence will be strong and will demonstrate the lasting impact of discrimination.”

In fact, court documents show that Bacote’s legal team claims that in his trial testlocal prosecutors “were “nearly twice as likely to exclude people of color from the jury pool as whites,” and in the Bacote case, prosecutors selected to strike prospective black jurors from the jury pool at greater than 3 times the rate of prospective white jurors.”

Moreover, evidence is presented showing that the risk of requesting and carrying out the death penalty was 1.5 times greater Black defendants in Johnston County.

“There is no doubt that our evidence in the Hasson Bacote case speaks to the larger conversation taking place in North Carolina about whether we should retain the death penalty or whether the governor should commute his sentence,” said Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU Death penalty project.

“Is there statewide discrimination in jury selection in North Carolina?” Stubbs He asked. “That is the most important question and the judge will answer that question.”

Legal experts predict the proceedings to make a decision whether Bacote’s sentence needs to be reduced to life in prison could take two weeks. The judge may resolve to issue the panel’s ruling or defer the decision until a later date, but either way it would mean a brand new one legal precedent.