Jan 3, 2025 Story by: Editor
RALEIGH, NC – Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina has commuted the death sentences of 15 individuals, including Hasson Bacote, the lead plaintiff in a pivotal case challenging the death penalty under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act (RJA). This unprecedented action, the largest of its kind in the state’s history, has been lauded by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Legal Defense Fund, the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, and attorney Jay Ferguson. Advocates see this as a significant move to address the racial inequities and systemic harms associated with the death penalty in North Carolina, home to the fifth largest death row in the United States.
Hasson Bacote, a Black man sentenced to death in 2009, filed a lawsuit in 2010, arguing that racial discrimination played a role in jury selection for his case and in other death penalty trials across the state.
“We are thrilled for Mr. Bacote and the other 14 people on death row who had their sentences commuted by Governor Cooper today,” said Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project. “This decision is a historic step towards ending the death penalty in North Carolina, but the fight for justice does not end here. We remain hopeful that the court will issue a ruling under the state’s Racial Justice Act in Mr. Bacote’s case that we can leverage for relief for the many others that still remain on death row.”
The RJA, enacted in 2009, allowed individuals to contest their death sentences by demonstrating that racial bias influenced their trials. Although the statute was repealed in 2013, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled in 2020 that individuals who had filed claims under the RJA before its repeal were entitled to hearings.
“The RJA hearing demonstrated that racial bias infiltrates all death penalty cases in North Carolina, not just Mr. Bacote’s and those in Johnston County,” said Ashley Burrell, senior counsel at the Legal Defense Fund. “Today’s decision is one step closer towards redressing the death penalty’s long history of racialized, systemic violence.”
In Bacote’s hearings, expert testimony from historians, statisticians, and researchers highlighted widespread discrimination against Black defendants during jury selection by prosecutors throughout North Carolina, particularly in Johnston County. Evidence also linked contemporary death penalty cases to the state’s history of racial violence. Superior Court Judge Wayland J. Sermons, Jr. oversaw the hearings.
“Mr. Bacote brought forth unequivocal evidence, unlike any that’s ever been presented in a North Carolina courtroom, that the death penalty is racist,” said Shelagh Kenney, deputy director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation. “Through years of investigation and the examination of thousands of pages of documents, his case revealed a deep entanglement between the death penalty and North Carolina’s history of segregation and racial terror. We are happy Mr. Bacote got the relief he deserves, and we hope Governor Cooper’s action will be a step toward ending North Carolina’s racist and error-prone death penalty for good.”
While Bacote has been granted relief from death row by the governor, the judge’s ruling in his case is still pending. Legal experts expect the decision to hold significant implications for other death row inmates due to the compelling evidence presented and the widespread public interest. Bacote is represented by the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, the ACLU of North Carolina, the Legal Defense Fund, the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, and Durham attorney Jay H. Ferguson. Source: ACLU
