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Second Racial Justice Act attorney cleared of alleged ethics violations
The North Carolina State Bar has reversed a prior panel ruling and cleared attorney Cassandra Stubbs of ethics violations alleged to have occurred during her representation of death row inmate Marcus...
View ArticleNew SCOTUS ruling sends strong message to North Carolina
Editor’s note: Cross-posted from the NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed what North Carolina death row inmates have been saying for years:...
View ArticleTwo new “must reads” on the death penalty (Video)
Kristin Collins of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation has two new “must read” posts on the Center for Alternatives to the Death Penalty blog. The first highlights the outrageous story of Duane...
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News site is charitable in calling Berger and Moore’s death penalty...
As was explained in a December Policy Watch radio commentary, Senate President Pro Tem Phil Berger and House Speaker Tim Moore were ridiculously off-base with their recent claim that Gov. Roy Cooper...
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NC public opinion on the death penalty appears to have reached a tipping point
There is powerful new polling data today on the public attitudes of North Carolinians toward the death penalty. A press release from the good people at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation explains:...
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Report documents racism that infected trials of NC death row inmates
Be sure to check reporter Jack Brook’s story from earlier this morning for The Marshall Project about North Carolina’s broken death penalty system that, despite years of inactivity as well as the...
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NY Times lead Sunday editorial decries “a travesty…for everyone in North...
In case you missed it, the lead editorial in Sunday’s New York Times was about North Carolina. “They Were Freed From Death Row. Republicans Put Them Back.” (the paper version shortened the headline to...
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NC Supreme Court: Racial Justice Act repeal cannot be applied retroactively
Over 100 people incarcerated on death row who sought relief from the now-repealed Racial Justice Act (RJA) for racial discrimination during their trials can have their day in court, the North Carolina...
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NC Supreme Court: Reimposing death penalty after Racial Justice Act repeal...
The North Carolina Supreme Court issued a much-anticipated decision today involving the Racial Justice Act — a state statute that was passed into law in 2009 and repealed in 2013. In today’s ruling,...
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First Racial Justice Act claim since landmark 2020 ruling is heard in state...
Judge Wayland J. Sermons, Jr. heard Hasson Bacote’s Racial Justice Act claim in Wake County Superior Court on May 20, 2021. The first case re-evaluating the role of racial bias in the death penalty...
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Remembering Marcus Robinson, who helped expose death penalty racism
Marcus Robinson at his Racial Justice Act hearing in 2012 Photo: CDPL Last month, Marcus Robinson was found dead in his cell at Scotland Correctional Institution. The prison ruled it a suicide. He was...
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Are NC district attorneys a roadblock to needed criminal justice reform?
Lawmakers, civil rights groups and researchers say DAs often thwart necessary change Jim Woodall made a promise to the family of Eve Carson, the UNC-Chapel Hill student body president who was murdered...
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In NC, one man — Gov. Roy Cooper — has the power to empty death row. But will...
Ed Chapman was wrongfully convicted of murder and served 15 years at Central Prison — nearly 14 of them on death row — at central prison in Raleigh. He was exonerated in 2008. (Photo: Justin Cook)This...
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North Carolina AG’s office pushes for delay in key Racial Justice Act hearing
The North Carolina attorney general's office has petitioned the state Supreme Court to overrule a Johnston County's Superior Court's plans to commence a review on Feb. 26 of evidence of racism in jury...
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Weekend reads: NCSU’s cancer cluster, campaign finance issues, and a $804K...
NC State Capitol (Photo: Clayton Henkel) Breast cancer cluster suspected at NC State’s Poe Hall, contaminated with PCBs; separate study shows those chemicals linked to that cancer Testing showed five...
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Lawyers to argue death penalty is ‘a legacy of racial terrorism’— if NC...
A billboard that welcomed people to Smithfield, a town in Johnston County, stood until the 1970s, "but the efforts to keep Black Johnstonians off juries continued," said Henderson Hill, one of the...
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Fatal flaws in North Carolina’s death penalty on display in Johnston County
The North Carolina attorney general's office has petitioned the state Supreme Court to overrule a Johnston County's Superior Court's plans to commence a review on Feb. 26 of evidence of racism in jury...
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Noel Nickle of the NC Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty on the...
Noel Nickle, executive director of the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death PenaltyThis week in Johnston County, the death penalty – a punishment our state has not inflicted in close...
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Death penalty on trial as Racial Justice Act hearing begins
Hasson Bacote in a recent picture taken at Central Prison in Raleigh, where North Carolina's death row for men is located. Photo courtesy of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation.In 1968, days after...
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RJA hearing expert: Race is a factor in prosecutors’ decision to strike jurors
Photo: Getty ImagesIn poring over thousands of pages of court transcripts and prosecutors’ notes on jury selection in capital cases across North Carolina between 1985 and 2011, Barbara O’Brien...
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Expert: Every Black person tried capitally in Johnston County has received a...
Richard Smith, a professor of statistics at UNC Chapel Hill, testifies in Johnston County in a hearing for Hasson Bacote. Photo taken from WRAL's livestream of the proceedings. Every Black person who...
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‘Johnston County is Klan Country,’ expert says in Racial Justice Act hearing
Billboards erected in Johnston County that stood from the 1960s to the 1970s, a response to the Civil Rights Movement, an expert testified in a Johnston County courtroom Monday. (Source: WRAL...
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Witnesses explore jury selection, racial stereotypes in Johnston County...
Johnston County courthouse. Photo: North Carolina Judicial Branch website.Research presented in a Johnston County courtroom last week showed Black people were 10 times more likely than members of other...
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Racial Justice Act hearing concludes — for now
A billboard that welcomed people to Smithfield, a town in Johnston County, stood until the 1970s, "but the efforts to keep Black Johnstonians off juries continued," said Henderson Hill, one of the...
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In historic NC hearing, Joe Freeman Britt’s troubled past as prosecutor looms
Joe Freeman Britt is perhaps most notorious for sending brothers Henry McCollum (left) and Leon Brown (right), two intellectually disabled Black teens, to death row in 1984 for the murder of an...
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