State Supreme Court Sends Racial Justice Act Cases Back to Superior Court

Just before Christmas, the Supreme Court of North Carolina decided the Racial Justice Act cases that were argued back in April 2014. Rather than ruling on the merits, the court remanded the cases for further proceedings, concluding that the State should have been granted a continuance to allow it to respond to the inmates’ statistical study of jury selection across the state in capital cases. The RJA. The Racial Justice Act was enacted in 2009. Generally, the Act allowed a capital defendant to attempt to establish, through statistical or other evidence, that race played a significant factor in capital cases in the state or a relevant political subdivision thereof, including in a defendant’s own case. The original RJA clearly went beyond the scope of existing constitutional protections against racial discrimination in criminal proceedings. Most of North Carolina’s death row inmates, of all races, filed claims under the Act. The Act was amended in 2012. The amendment curtailed the protections provided by the Act, though the exact scope of the amended RJA is not completely clear. The original and amended version of the Act are discussed in detail in the North Carolina Capital Case Law Handbook. The cases. The court ruled on four cases, all involving post-conviction claims filed by inmates sentenced to death in Cumberland County. Marcus Robinson was sentenced to death in 1994 for killing 17-year-old Erick Tornbloom. In April 2012, Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks found, inter alia, that Robinson met his burden under the RJA of showing discrimination [...]