Closing arguments are set to begin Wednesday in a case that could impact more than 100 death row inmates in North Carolina.
Hasson Bacote, a Black man from North Carolina, was sentenced to death following a murder in Johnston County in 2007 during a robbery. Bacote is challenging his death sentence under the state's Racial Justice Act, arguing that race played a role in jury selection.
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Bacote's attorneys have argued his case was mishandled and tainted by racism in jury selection and training. Attorneys representing Bacote told WRAL News to expect compelling statements on Wednesday to back up evidence and testimonies from social scientists and historians presented throughout the two-week hearing.
Bacote was sentenced to death in 2009 by 10 white jurors and two Black jurors after he was convicted of shooting an 18-year-old named Anthony Surles during a robbery. One of Bacote’s arguments is that he wasn’t convicted of first-degree murder, unlike almost everyone else on death row.
If the death penalty was lifted for Bacote, he would still face life in prison.
A ruling in Bacote's favor on Wednesday could allow more than 100 other North Carolina death row inmates to appeal their cases under the Racial Justice Act.
The Racial Justice Act, a law that the legislature passed in 2009 — and then repealed in 2013 — that lets death row inmates appeal their sentence on the basis of racism in their prosecution. Although the law has been repealed, people who had started their appeals already were allowed to carry on those efforts due to a 2020 ruling by the state Supreme Court.
Grethecn Engel, the executive director at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, a non-profit law firm that represents people on death row, said she is hopeful there will be a reckoning and that it will motivate Gov. Roy Cooper to grant reductions or even pardons before his term ends.
"That would be really compelling to Governor Cooper, [a] really strong message about the untenable nature of the death penalty and a call for him to exercise his unbridled power to grant commutations," Engel said.
The closing arguments, held at the Johnston County Courthouse, will be livestreamed on jshu.net at 10 a.m.
Bacote is represented by the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund and North Carolina Attorney Jay Ferguson.