Earlier this month, a Johnston County judge in North Carolina found that race played a significant role in the death penalty trial of Hasson Bacote, from the makeup of his jury to his death sentence handed down by that jury, the Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL) announced.
In his ruling, Judge Wayland Sermons wrote, “The Court finds that Mr. [prosecutor Greg] Butler, on more than one occasion, has stood before capital juries and deployed racist language designed to evoke the very prejudices and stereotypes that have long caused jurors to punish Black defendants more harshly. In 2001, he sought a death sentence for two Black men arguing, “just like the animals on the African [plain], after having felled their victim, they dragged their victim away; and finally, they killed their victim.”
“We are grateful that Judge Sermons carefully weighed the evidence and found that the administration of the death penalty in Johnston County remains deeply entangled with racism,” said CDPL Executive Director Gretchen M. Engel, who, with the ACLU and the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, brought forward Bacote’s Racial Justice Act claim.
“This decision is a damning indictment of the death penalty, and should serve as a call for every North Carolina death sentence to be reexamined. North Carolina must never carry out another execution tainted by racial discrimination.” Engel added.
The judge’s ruling comes on the heels of Gov. Roy Cooper’s historic grant of clemency to 15 people on death row at the end of December, including Bacote. So, while Sermons’ decision will not affect Bacote’s sentence, the ruling has significance for the 121 people remaining on North Carolina’s death row because the findings go beyond Bacote’s case, according to Engel.
Among the evidence Sermons cited in his order were statistical studies proving race discrimination in jury selection. The judge also considered prosecutors’ racist notes and disparate treatment of white and Black potential jurors, as well as evidence showing the history of discrimination in Johnston County and around the state. This evidence showed Black people were disproportionately denied a voice in the justice system. In front of a majority white jury, prosecutors often felt free to invoke racist tropes and slurs.
“Judge Sermons was very clear in his ruling,” Engel said. “It is no coincidence that all eight of the Black men tried capitally in Johnston County under modern death penalty laws have been sentenced to death. By comparison, only about half of white defendants in the county received death sentences.”
In Bacote’s case, prosecutor Greg Butler struck prospective Black jurors at more than three times the rate of white potential jurors and referred to Bacote as a “thug” during the trial, Engel said.“The evidence of racism in the death penalty is simply too egregious to deny, and it extends far beyond any one case. It’s now up to our new governor and attorney general to take action to remedy the systemic racism of the death penalty.”
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