North Carolina Judge Finds Racial Discrimination in Death Penalty, Commutes Death Sentence to Life..

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North Carolina Judge Finds Racial Discrimination in Death Penalty, Commutes Death Sentence to Life Without Parole

Ruling Under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act Says No One Should Be Sent to Death Because of Racial Bias

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. – A North Carolina judge Friday issued a landmark decision finding intentional and systemic discrimination by state prosecutors against African-American potential jurors in capital cases and commuted the sentence of a death-row prisoner to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The decision on behalf of Marcus Robinson by North Carolina Superior Court Judge Gregory Weeks, the first to be issued under the state’s historic Racial Justice Act, comes nearly 25 years to the day after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in McCleskey v. Kemp that evidence of systemic bias is not sufficient to challenge a death sentence.

Passed in 2009, the Racial Justice Act allows North Carolina’s 157 death-row prisoners a hearing in which they can present statistics and other evidence that death sentences state- and county-wide were tainted by race discrimination and that their death should be commuted to life in prison.

“Today’s ruling gives a sense of promise that there will be change,” said Cassandra Stubbs, staff attorney for the ACLU Capital Punishment Project and part of the legal team that represented Robinson during his almost three-week-long Racial Justice Act hearing earlier this year. “There is now an opportunity for prosecutors to change their practices so that the process of jury selection in North Carolina will reflect the fundamental American values of justice and fairness that we should all expect.”

In his ruling, Weeks found that prosecutors deliberately excluded qualified Black jurors from jury service in death-row inmate Robinson’s case, in Cumberland County and throughout the state.

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http://www.aclu.org/capital-punishment/north-carolina-judge-finds-racial-discrimination-death-penalty-commutes-death

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1. Kick! n/t

[barbtries]

2. good news.

thank you ACLU and everyone who works for justice.