Race was ‘a significant factor’ in Johnston County death penalty case, NC judge rules
A Johnston County judge ruled Friday that race was “a significant factor” in the jury selection and sentencing of Hasson Bacote, a Black man who was sentenced to death in 2009 and who was spared from death row last year.
In a 120-page order, Superior Court Judge Wayland Sermons also ruled that race was “a significant factor” in other death penalty cases brought by Greg Butler, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted Bacote, and by other prosecutors in the county and the prosecutorial district where the cases were tried.
Sermons said Friday that the evidence of racial discrimination that Bacote’s lawyers introduced during a two-week hearing last year “points to a consistent picture of the role race has played in jury selection throughout Johnston County and Prosecutorial District 11, and in the capital cases tried by prosecutor Mr. Butler, including in Mr. Bacote’s trial.”
In his order, Sermons, a Democrat, said there isn’t any doubt that “racially discriminatory jury selection practices ‘undermine public confidence in the fairness of our system of justice,’” quoting Batson v. Kentucky, a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case in which the high court said that prosecutors couldn’t seek to remove potential jurors on the basis of their race.
He said that similarly, “A death sentence tainted by race likewise harms defendants and impugns the legitimacy of the criminal punishment system as a whole.”
Cooper commuted Bacote’s sentence to life in prison
Bacote, who challenged his sentence under the Racial Justice Act in 2010, was one of the 89 inmates on death row who had petitioned former Gov. Roy Cooper for clemency.
He was tried in 2009 for the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Anthony Surles during a robbery, and was found guilty of first-degree murder. At the time he was charged, Bacote was 21 years old.
On his final day in office in December, Cooper, a two-term Democrat, granted clemency to Bacote and 14 others, commuting their death sentences to life without the possibility of parole.
Bacote’s lawyers said Friday that even though the ruling won’t affect his sentence, the order handed down by Sermons has implications for the 121 people who remain on death row “because it makes findings that go far beyond” Bacote’s case.
Attorneys for the state, meanwhile, informed Sermons that they planned to appeal his ruling to the North Carolina Supreme Court, which currently has a 5-2 Republican majority.
More than 100 of the 121 people currently on death row have pending claims under the Racial Justice Act, according to the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, a Durham-based law firm that represents people on death row, and was a part of Bacote’s legal team.
Gretchen Engel, the CDPL’s executive director, said Bacote’s lawyers were “grateful” that Sermons “carefully weighed the evidence and found that the administration of the death penalty in Johnston County remains deeply entangled with racism.”
“This decision is a damning indictment of the death penalty, and should serve as a call for every North Carolina death sentence to be reexamined,” Engel said in a news release after the ruling. “North Carolina must never carry out another execution tainted by racial discrimination.”
Judge weighs in on how other claims should be decided
In his order, Sermons said that the other pending claims under the Racial Justice Act should be “handled separately, individually, and on the basis of their facts, with all the statistical, cultural, historical, social science, and other evidence produced in this case as a guide to follow.”
That evidence included testimony from expert witnesses who presented statistical analyses and social science research, and spoke about the role race has played in the criminal justice system in the state and in Johnston County. The judge also considered “the words and actions” of prosecutors during capital trials.
The law under which Bacote challenged his death sentence doesn’t require proof of discrimination by a specific prosecutor, but Sermons said statistical evidence presented at the hearing showed potential Black jurors in Bacote’s case and others were disproportionately removed by prosecutors compared to other jurors.
During Bacote’s trial, Sermons noted, the prosecution “struck qualified Black potential jurors at 3.3 times the rate it struck all other qualified jurors.”
Sermons said he also considered evidence that Butler, the lead prosecutor in Bacote’s case, had “a history of denigrating Black defendants in thinly veiled racist terms,” having described Black defendants in another capital case as “predators of the African plain,” and referred to Bacote as a “thug.”
While testifying during Bacote’s hearing last year, Butler conceded the word “thug” has racial connotations, but said he “didn’t mean it in a racist way” — an explanation Sermons found to be “unbelievable and without credibility.”
Reached by phone Friday, Butler declined to comment.
Bacote thanks court for ‘having the courage’ to recognize racial bias
In a statement made through his attorneys, Bacote said Friday that when his death sentence was commuted by Cooper, “I felt enormous relief that the burden of the death penalty — and all of the stress and anxiety that go with it — were lifted off my shoulders.
“I am grateful to the court for having the courage to recognize that racial bias affected my case and so many others,” Bacote said. “I remain hopeful that the fight for truth and justice will not stop here.”
The Racial Justice Act, which was passed by Democrats in the General Assembly in 2009, allowed inmates on death row to challenge their sentence if they believed race was a factor in jury selection or sentencing. Inmates who successfully proved discrimination would have their sentences reduced to life without parole.
Four death row inmates — Marcus Robinson, Tilmon Golphin, Christina Walters, and Quintel Augustine — successfully challenged their sentences under the law in 2012, and had their sentences commuted to life without parole.
A year later, the General Assembly, which was then under Republican control, repealed the law, arguing that the death penalty was a necessary deterrent.
But a door ultimately remained open to Racial Justice Act claims moving forward, when, in June 2020, the N.C. Supreme Court — then under Democratic control — ruled that inmates who had filed challenges before the law was repealed could still be heard in court.
Bacote’s case was the first to be heard following the Supreme Court’s ruling.
This story was originally published February 7, 2025 at 1:25 PM with the headline "Race was ‘a significant factor’ in Johnston County death penalty case, NC judge rules."
