On Monday, Feb. 26, we filled the Johnston County Courthouse for the start of a landmark hearing that will reveal the full scope of the NC death penalty’s racism. During more than a week of testimony, attorneys will lay out incontrovertible evidence that the North Carolina death penalty is a tool of white supremacy.
The crowd that packed the courtroom on Monday sent a clear message: The people of North Carolina are watching.
Our presence was especially meaningful in Johnston County, where racism has been not just pervasive but, at times, proudly displayed. This rural county just east of Raleigh is notorious for Ku Klux Klan activity and for billboards that, until the mid-1970s, assailed drivers with the message: “This is Klan Country. Love it or leave it.” That racism did not disappear with the billboards, but has continued to play out in the form of intimidation of Black residents, police violence, the suppression of Black votes – and the disparate use of the death penalty.
Technically, this week’s hearing is about the case of a single person on North Carolina’s death row, Hasson Bacote, who was sentenced to death in 2009. (Read a detailed profile of the case here.) However, Mr. Bacote’s case will also reveal evidence of discrimination that runs much deeper, affecting all of North Carolina’s 136 death sentences. Among those who will testify are statistical experts, historians, prosecutors, and the nationally known defense attorney Bryan Stevenson, who founded the Equal Justice Initiative and wrote the book Just Mercy. He will testify about how the blatant racism of lynching and Jim Crow continues to perpetuate itself in the modern death penalty.
Here are just a few of the facts that will come out during Mr. Bacote’s hearing:
- Since the mid-1970s, eight black men have been tried capitally by Johnston County juries and every one of them has been sentenced to death. By contrast, less than half of the white people tried capitally have been sentenced to death.
- On North Carolina’s death row, there are just 11 people who have been sentenced to death without evidence that they planned or intended the murder. All 11 are men of color, and Mr. Bacote is one of them. Another person convicted without this evidence is Henry McCollum, who was later exonerated after spending 30 years on death row.
- The prosecutor in Mr. Bacote’s case referred to Mr. Bacote as a “thug” during his trial. In another capital case, he compared Black defendants to “predators of the African plain.” This is linked to a long history of Black defendants being referred to as animals.
- Mr. Bacote’s prosecutor, in all his capital trials, struck qualified Black citizens from juries at 10 times the rate he struck white jurors. Statewide, prosecutors exclude people of color from juries at more than twice the rate of whites. In Johnston County, the rate is three to one.
The exclusion of Black and Brown people from juries denies them a key civil right and a voice in the court system – and their exclusion is no accident. As part of this case, Mr. Bacote’s attorneys were given unprecedented access to prosecutors’ jury selection notes from thirty years of capital trials across North Carolina. Those notes showed that prosecutors frequently marked the names of Black jurors with the letter B while failing to note the races of other jurors. They noted typically Black hairstyles including “cornrows” and “dreadlocks.” They struck jurors who listened to rap music, read Ebony and Jet magazines, watched BET, or attended historically Black colleges. They marked one white juror as “good” because she would “bring her own rope.”
In a state with 136 people on death row, this kind of widespread racism in our death penalty should be an alarm bell. If we believe in racial justice, we must do everything possible to stop executions from resuming.
Let’s continue to show up for justice. If you can’t make it to Johnston County over the next week, you can share our posts on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. Please also take a few minutes to send a postcard to Gov. Cooper telling him that he must commute racist death sentences.
We the people of North Carolina will not tolerate a racist death penalty.
