After North Carolina Republicans repealed the state’s Racial Justice Act last year, the state Supreme Court is considering whether to send back to death row four inmates whose death sentences were reduced to life without parole thanks t0 the law. Last month, Barry Scheck explained the case:
The four prisoners in the case have uncovered a mountain of evidence of discrimination in their cases and county, including a prosecutor’s handwritten notes in one of their cases. In it, he described prospective jurors differently by race. The white “country boy” who “drank” was “ok,” in contrast to the “black wino” who was excluded. Another African-American juror was “ok” because she was from “a respectable black family.”
The evidence also contained an unprecedented study of race and jury selection in North Carolina. Researchers found across the state, in counties large and small, urban and rural, rampant racial discrimination against African-American jurors by the prosecution was the norm.
Lane Florsheim adds more context:
Jury selection based on race is illegal.
A 1986 Supreme Court decision (Batson v. Kentucky) ruled that prosecutors cannot rely on race to dismiss jurors. In reality, though, this can be difficult to enforce, as prosecutors can eliminate jurors without expressing a reason—a prerogative known as peremptory challenge. In some states, according to the NAACP brief, “cheat sheets” have been distributed during prosecutorial conferences. These sheets instruct prosecutors on how “to hide the fact that you’re really eliminating this person because he or she happens to be black,” says Neil Vidmar, a law professor at Duke and a member of the team who prepared the brief. “The cheat sheet gives [prosecutors] a list of reasons that courts have approved as neutral explanations,” says James Coleman, also a law professor at Duke, “It gives them the answer that will give them a passing grade.”
The Dish 