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| Death row inmate tests North Carolina's Racial Justice Act |
| By latimes.com - David Zucchino |
| Published: 02/29/2012 |
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Fayetteville, N.C. -- For nearly three weeks, convicted murderer Marcus Reymond Robinson has listened quietly inside a county courtroom here to intricate testimony about statistics — dry statistics that could get him off death row. Robinson, a black man convicted of killing a white teenager in 1991, is the first inmate to test North Carolina's Racial Justice Act, the nation's only law that allows death row prisoners to reduce their sentences to life without parole by proving racial bias in jury selection or sentencing. The act, passed in 2009, has drawn bitter condemnation from prosecutors and Republican state legislators who call it a backdoor attempt to repeal the death penalty. It allows inmates to cite statistical patterns in statewide jury selection — rather than focusing solely on their own cases — to argue that their jury selection or sentencing was racially biased. "It's new territory," Richard Dieter, director of the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center, said of the case's legal and political implications. Robinson's case is being closely followed by legal scholars, lawyers and politicians. If he's successful, it could prompt calls for similar laws in at least 20 other states that have conducted studies on race, jury selection and the death penalty. White, as well as black, defendants could argue that eliminating black jurors denied them jurors more likely to oppose the death penalty and to view police with suspicion, Dieter said. More than 150 inmates on North Carolina's death row, many of whom are white, have petitioned for hearings under the law. Read More. |
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