Today, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled that the NC legislature could not retroactively repeal the Racial Justice Act for #deathrow prisoners who had filed claims. This is a big deal, and here’s why. (1/)
With today’s ruling, everyone on death row in North Carolina who filed a claim under the Racial Justice Act will have the opportunity to prove racial bias in their cases. Anyone who proves racial bias will be removed from death row and resentenced to life without parole. (2/)
It means that North Carolina can keep the promise it made when it passed the RJA in 2009 to no longer tolerate racial discrimination in death penalty cases. (3/)
It is worth remembering how the North Carolina Racial Justice Act passed and how North Carolina came to make this commitment. We have many legislators, community and civil rights organizations to thank. But the biggest credit goes to these four men (4/): 
Bo Jones, Jonathan Hoffman, Glen Chapman and Darryl Hunt were all capitally charged, and all convicted by white or nearly all white juries. And they were all innocent. They collectively spent decades incarcerated for crimes they did not commit. (5/)
The picture above is from the day they went to the North Carolina legislature and shared their stories. (6/)
After the RJA passed, ACLU client Marcus Robinson from Cumberland County was the first person to challenge his death sentence at hearing under the RJA. We ultimately litigated four cases in Cumberland County under the RJA and won all four. (7/)
We uncovered powerful evidence of race discrimination. Prosecutors went to a training where they were given a handout of preset explanations to justify why they removed Black jurors from serving in trials. In one capital trial, a prosecutor read verbatim from the handout. (8/)
The list goes on. The prosecutors took derogatory and demeaning hand-written notes about Black jurors in one case, and questioned whether a Black juror who had graduated high school could read in another case. (9/)
A sweeping study by MSU Law researchers Catherine Grosso and Barbara O’Brien showed overwhelming statewide, county-wide, and case specific evidence of discrimination against Black jurors. (10/)
The North Carolina legislature responded to this troubling evidence of racial bias by trying to sweep it under the rug, repealing the law, and trying to take away the RJA for everyone who had filed. (11/)
The NC Supreme Court had earlier granted the prosecutors’ request for a new opportunity and more time to rebut the showing of discrimination in Marcus Robinson's case. But the NC legislature even tried to take his hearing away and to put Marcus back on death row. (12/)
But today, the North Carolina Supreme Court reversed course, setting us again on the path towards racial justice. And in a twist, the Court relied on a state constitutional ruling that protected the legislature’s grant of amnesty to confederate soldiers from repeal. (13/)
Restoring death row inmates the right to litigate their filed claims of racial bias is an important step in this state’s long journey towards racial justice. #Repeal of the racist, unfair and inaccurate death penalty would be an even better step. (End)
