North Carolina governor makes shock move regarding 15 death row inmates on his last day in office

North Carolina’s governor reduced the death penalty to life without parole for 15 inmates on his last day in office.

Governor Roy Cooper, who previously served as attorney general for 16 years, will be barred from seeking a third consecutive term and will officially pass the torch to fellow Democrat Josh Stein when he is sworn in on Wednesday. NPR reported.

But in one of his final acts in office, Cooper on Tuesday commuted the death sentences of 15 men convicted of murder, officially reducing the state’s death row population by more than 10 percent.

“These reviews are among the most difficult decisions a governor can make and the death penalty is the most severe punishment the state can impose,” he said in a news release.

“After thorough research, reflection and prayer, I have concluded that the death sentence imposed on these fifteen people should be commuted, while ensuring that they will spend the rest of their lives in prison.”

North Carolina is one of 27 states that offer the death penalty as a form of criminal punishment, despite not having had an execution since 2006.

And before his final decision on Tuesday, 136 offenders were awaiting death, 89 of whom had applied for clemency.

While Cooper insisted there was no single factor in determining his decision, he took into account “potential influence of race, such as the race of the defendant and the victim, the makeup of the jury pool and the final jury pool,” This is reported by NBC News.

The state Department of Adult Correction listed 13 of the 15 who received reduced sentences as black, with sentencing dates ranging from 1993 to 2011, NPR reported.

One of the inmates receiving a lighter sentence is Hasson Bacote – a now 38-year-old man convicted of first-degree murder in Johnson County in 2009 and sentenced to death by ten white and two black jurors.

Bacote challenged his sentence under the Racial Justice Act of 2009 – a law that allows prisoners to serve life in prison without parole if they can prove that racial bias was the reason for their death sentence.

But in 2013, then-Governor Pat McCrory repealed the law, arguing that it “created a loophole in the judiciary to avoid the death penalty and not a path to justice,” NBC News reported.

Still, in 2020 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of many prisoners, allowing those who had already filed complaints to move forward with the process.

Last February, sermons began reviewing Bacote’s case after multiple lawsuits were filed on behalf of the convicted man, including the American Civil Liberties Union of North Carolina.

He is being held in a jail in Raleigh as death sentences remain halted in the state due to legal disputes and problems obtaining drugs needed for lethal injections.

During Bacote’s two-week trial, several historians, social scientists and statisticians testified that jury selection in Johnson County had long been tainted with racism.

Johnson County, a mostly white suburb near Raleigh, regularly displayed Ku Klux Klan billboards during the Jim Crow era.

His legal team also presented evidence indicating that the death penalty was one and a half times as likely to be sought and given to a black defendant in Johnson County, and twice as likely “in minority cases.” defendants’.

Newly elected Governor Josh Stein, then the attorney general, tried to delay Bacote’s hearing, arguing that his attorneys’ claims were based in part on an earlier investigation that the Supreme Court had already found “unreliable and fatally flawed.” . ‘.

While the attorney general’s office said in court that racial bias in jury selection is “heinous,” they added that a “claim of racial discrimination cannot be sustained based on a defendant’s mere allegation; it must be proven’.

Bacote’s hearing before a judge who used the law was considered a test case.

Guy LeGrande — a man convicted in 1993 of murdering a woman whose estranged husband offered to pay him part of a life insurance policy in Stanly County — was another inmate whose sentence was commuted, NPR reported.

His lawyer claimed he was mentally ill but was still scheduled to be executed in late 2006 – but his death never happened because a judge temporarily halted his case.

Another inmate sentenced to life without parole is Christopher Roseboro, a man convicted of murder and rape in the 1992 death of a 72-year-old Gastonia woman.

The number of death row inmates has declined in recent years as lawyers have more power in deciding whether or not a case should go to trial.

But even after Cooper’s decision, North Carolina remains the nation’s fifth-largest death row population.

Opposition death penalty groups have long urged Cooper to fully redeem all death row inmates, but they still praised him for what they called a “historic act of clemency.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Legal Defense Fund and the Center for Death Penalty Litigation are just some of those who applauded Cooper’s move.

“This decision is a historic step toward ending the death penalty in North Carolina,” Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, said in a statement, NBC reported.

Chantal Stevens, the ACLU’s executive director, released a separate statement on the decision, adding to Stubbs’ assessment, NPR reported.

“Cooper joins a group of courageous leaders who have used their executive power to address the botched death penalty,” Stevens said.

“We have long known that the death penalty in North Carolina is racist, unjust and immoral, and today’s actions by the governor clear the way for our state to move toward a new era of justice.”

This is the second time Cooper has received national attention this year alone. He had previously emerged as a potential running mate for Kamala Harris ahead of the presidential election.

Just last week, President Joe Biden announced he would reduce the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row — changing their sentences to life in prison.