Racial Justice Act case is before Superior Court judge after closing arguments • NC Newsline

SMITHFIELD – Closing arguments were heard Wednesday in a Johnston County case that has significant implications for more than 120 people on North Carolina’s death row.

As NC Newsline reported in detail earlier this year, the case involves Hasson Bacote, a black man who was sentenced to death in Johnston County in 2009.

Bacote and his lawyers are challenging his death sentence under the Racial Justice Act, a North Carolina law enacted in 2009 and repealed in 2013 that allowed capital crime defendants to base their convictions on race. The law stated that individuals who successfully demonstrated that their race was a significant factor in the decision to seek or impose the death penalty could be sentenced to life in prison.

Although the 2013 repeal sought to invalidate claims filed while the law was on the state's statute books, a 2020 state Supreme Court ruling invalidated that provision—reinstating numerous pending RJA claims, like Bacote's.

Bacote is one of eight black men tried in Johnston County since the 1970s. Each of those men received the death penalty, while only about half of white defendants in capital crimes are sentenced to death. He is also one of only 11 people in North Carolina who have been sentenced to death without evidence that they intended or planned the killing. All 11 of those people are people of color and nine are black.

During several days of testimony in February and March, Bacote's attorney presented extensive evidence to show that race was a significant factor in his death sentence. They built their argument on 680,000 documents presented as part of the evidentiary hearing, which one attorney called “the most comprehensive evidentiary hearing the state has presented on jury selection issues in North Carolina.”

They also questioned Assistant District Attorney Gregory Butler, who prosecuted Bacote, about his closing arguments in two cases in which he had referred to black defendants as “thugs” and “predators of the African plains.” They also presented evidence showing that black potential jurors were more than 2.5 times more likely to be rejected from a jury pool statewide than they were to be rejected from a jury pool in Johnston County, and 10 times more likely to be rejected from a jury pool in cases Butler tried.

On Wednesday, Bacote's lawyers summarized and restated their case. “Race is a significant factor in determining death sentences in Johnston County,” said Ashley Burrell, senior counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc.

“The evidence is clear that the modern death penalty is still directly linked to our state's history of racial terror and continues to produce biased outcomes,” Gretchen M. Engel, executive director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, wrote in a statement.

Jonathan P. Babb, special assistant attorney for the North Carolina Department of Justice, rejected that argument in court Wednesday, saying Bacote's conviction was not a byproduct of racial discrimination.

He pointed out that the racial makeup of the jury in the Bacote case – nine jurors were white, two black and one Asian – matched the county's census data at the time, which showed that 76.3 percent of Johnston County's population was all white.

The jury selection was “representative of Johnston County,” Babb said.

Bacote's case is widely viewed as a precedent-setting case, and the ruling is likely to set a precedent for how other judges handle about 120 other pending cases under the Racial Justice Act.

On Wednesday, Superior Court Judge Wayland J. Sermons, Jr. said he would review closing arguments from each party and issue a ruling, but did not specify a time for doing so.