A judge is scheduled to hear motions Tuesday on three pending first-degree-murder cases that ask that the start of each trial be delayed until after a study on the death penalty and race is finished.
The motions were filed under the state's recently passed Racial Justice Act.
The motions also ask for discovery information from prosecutors on what criteria they used in seeking the death penalty and whether race was a significant factor.
One of the cases involves Mikal Deen Mahdi, who is on death row in South Carolina. Mahdi is accused of killing a gas station clerk in Winston-Salem in 2004 during a crime spree that started in Virginia.
Prosecutors have said they plan to seek the death penalty but a hearing to determine whether they can or not has not been held because Mahdi is in South Carolina and has not been extradited.
A trial is tentatively scheduled for July 12, 2010.
Mahdi was placed in isolation cells last week after authorities said he and another death-row inmate, Quincy Jovan Allen, stabbed a prison guard with a makeshift weapon.
Allen killed four people in a crime spree in 2002 across North Carolina and South Carolina, including a clerk and a customer at a Citgo just off I-77 near Dobson.
Motions were also filed for Alfredo Garza Ayala, who was charged with first-degree murder last year in the death of his wife, Linda Nelly Munoz-Rivera, 42, at 108 Chestnut Trail, and for Amar Mushar Wilson Sr., who was charged with first-degree murder in the death of his 2-year-old son.
These are the first motions filed in Forsyth Superior Court under the Racial Justice Act, which Gov. Bev Perdue signed in August. The act allows defendants to use statistics and other evidence to prove racial bias in the application of the death penalty. Forsyth County District Attorney Tom Keith, who retired last week, and other prosecutors strongly opposed the act, saying it falsely implied that prosecutors are racist. They see the new law as a way to end the death penalty in North Carolina.
Inmates on death row can use the law as well as defendants who are awaiting trial in first-degree murder cases where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty or considering it.
Mark Rabil, a capital-defense attorney, said last month that defense attorneys would soon be filing motions based on the new law.
He did not return several calls seeking comment this week.
Jim O'Neill, who was sworn in this week as interim Forsyth County district attorney, was out of the office Friday and could not be reached for comment.
The motions ask, among other things, whether prosecutors have a program in place to eliminate race as a factor when deciding to pursue the death penalty.
The motions also ask for a delay until a major study is finished next August.
The study is being done by Barbara O'Brien and Catherine Grosso, law professors at Michigan State University. Their $500,000 study will look at 1,500 murder cases from 1990 to the present, both capital and noncapital.
The researchers will examine the factors that prosecutors used to determine whether to pursue the death penalty and see if race played a role in those decisions.
Keith has said defending motions filed under the Racial Justice Act will be expensive and require a large amount of research.
The state hasn't had any executions since August 2006 because of several legal challenges that have mostly been resolved by recent court rulings.
Currently, there are 161 people on death row, the majority of whom are black.
In Forsyth County, there are 52 pending first-degree murder cases, 17 of which prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty, according to statistics from the N.C. Office of Indigent Defense Services.
mhewlett@wsjournal.com
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