Jail abolitionist set to become judge in Charlotte after close win over incumbent
Self-proclaimed jail and prison abolitionist Habekah Cannon won Tuesday’s primary race for District Court judge holding Seat 18 in North Carolina’s District 26 — which covers all of Mecklenburg County, according to unofficial election results.
Cannon, 33, beat incumbent Judge Cecilia Oseguera by less than 4,000 votes. Cannon received 52% of the votes, and Oseguera received 48%, according to results posted on the website of the N.C. State Board of Elections. Across the district’s 195 precincts, 96,740 ballots were cast in the contest.
Cannon and Oseguera did not answer phone calls from The Charlotte Observer when the tight race’s results rolled in just after 11 p.m. Tuesday.
Cannon, a former public defender with her own law firm, was Oseguera’s only challenger. No Republicans ran so Cannon will be unopposed on the November general election ballot.
“Abolitionist oriented and community minded,” Cannon’s attorney website previously read. “We’ll get you out of that cage.”
That text is no longer on her website, but her attorney biography reads: “Habekah is an abolitionist.”
In 2020, she told Queen City Nerve she was asked to resign as a public defender for “not drawing wide enough margins between my work as an Assistant Public Defender and my activism.” She was arrested three times while offering legal services to people arrested during the 2020 protests of George Floyd’s murder. The District Attorney’s office dismissed all charges related to those arrests, court records show.
In a recent interview with Observer news partner WSOC-TV, Cannon said: “My role as an attorney is an advocate ... When I become judge, when I put on that robe and take that bench, I have to be impartial.”
Then-Gov. Roy Cooper appointed Oseguera to a vacant seat on the bench in 2022, and she won the election to serve the impending four-year term by 0.04 percent.
This story was originally published March 3, 2026 at 11:57 PM.
