Four Black Men Were Freed From Death Row. Republicans Put Them Back.
Source: New York Times
Four Black Men Were Freed From Death Row. Republicans Put Them Back.
The state Supreme Court will hear a case next week that’s a matter of life or death for some black inmates.
By The Editorial Board
The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed section.
Aug. 23, 2019
Updated 12:22 p.m. ET
One prosecutor called the defendant in a murder case a “big black bull” in front of an all-white jury.
Another prosecutor, taking notes on prospective jurors, described a black juror who drank as a “blk wino,” while describing a white juror who drank as “drinks — country boy — O.K.”
In a third case, a prospective black juror was struck from the jury of a black murder defendant after reporting that he heard two white jurors say that the defendant, who had been captured by police in the woods, “should have never made it out of the woods.”
These cases have two things in common. They happened in North Carolina, which has long had one of the most racially biased criminal-justice systems in the country. And they involve people who are now back on death row after their death sentences were thrown out and replaced with life in prison sentences because of racial discrimination by their prosecutors during their trials.
How they wound up there, without a new trial or any additional hearing, is the subject of a lawsuit that will be argued before the North Carolina Supreme Court next week. Ten years ago, the state, then led by Democrats, passed the Racial Justice Act to address persistent racial disparities in capital sentencing. It worked — but four years later, a newly elected Republican legislature and governor repealed the law, and the state is now trying to execute the people who briefly benefited from it.
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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/23/opinion/death-penalty-north-carolina.html
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