Judge rules race played role in jury selection

A North Carolina judge reduced a convicted murderer’s death sentence because prosecutors have for years dismissed qualified jurors based on race, MSNBC reported today.

The landmark ruling by Superior Court Judge Gregory A. Weeks is the first using North Carolina’s new Racial Justice Act, adopted in 2009.

“For over 100 years, jury selection in capital cases has been plagued by racial discrimination against qualified African-American citizens,” said ACLU lawyer Cassandra Stubbs, who was part of the defense in the case. “Today’s decision offers promise that change in this area, long overdue, is finally coming.”

Weeks heard the case of Marcus Reymond Robinson, convicted of kidnapping, shooting and killing 17-year-old Erik Tornblom in 1991. Robinson and an accomplice, who received a life sentence, made off with $27 and the teen’s car.

Robinson will instead serve life without parole.

Under the Racial Justice Act, defense teams can present statistics that show prosecutors made jury selections based on skin color.

“Race was a materially, practically and statistically significant factor in the decision to exercise preemptory challenges during jury selection by prosecutors,” Weeks wrote in his 167-page decision, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Prosecutors, who have 60 days to appeal, didn’t comment on the ruling.

North Carolina is the only state with such a law, the Miami Herald said.

In Robinson’s case, defense lawyers said prosecutors struck half the black jurors, but only 15 percent of those who where not black.

The jury that heard Robinson’s case included nine white, two black and one American Indian jurors, the Herald said.

The act is politically charged, with Republican lawmakers saying it’s an attempt to subvert the death penalty.

The Center For Death Penalty Litigation in Durham said all-white juries have sentenced 31 inmates to death in North Carolina, and 38 cases had just one non-white juror, MSNBC said.

Robinson was the first of North Carolina’s 157 death-row inmates to have his case heard using the Racial Justice Act.

MSNBC said only a few have not filed an appeal under the act.