FAYETTEVILLE Race didn't play a significant role in the exclusion of black jurors from the case of a death row prisoner who is challenging his sentence under North Carolina's Racial Justice Act, a former prosecutor testified today.
District Judge John Dickson, a former assistant district attorney in Cumberland County, said he didn't use peremptory challenges to exclude black jurors in the 1994 murder trial of Marcus Robinson.
Robinson, who is black, was sentenced to death for killing a white teenager in 1991.
"In no way, shape or form," Dickson said in response to a question from District Attorney Cal Colyer about whether race played a role in jury selection in the Robinson case and two other death penalty cases.
In 2009, the legislature approved the Racial Justice Act, which allows death row prisoners and defendants facing the death penalty to use statistics and other evidence to show racial bias played a significant role in either their sentences or prosecutors' decision to pursue the death penalty.
The law says that if the claim is successful, the prisoner's death sentence is reduced to life in prison without parole.
This hearing, expected to last about two weeks, addresses Robinson's claim that race was a factor in prosecutors' decisions to reject potential jurors who were black. Robinson also claims that race was a factor in the prosecutors' decisions to seek the death penalty against accused murderers and that the victims' race was a factor in whether juries issued death sentences.
Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks is hearing the case, which doesn't have a jury.
Dickson testified that he excluded five black potential jurors and forwarded another five to the defense for consideration. He testified that he thought three blacks served on the 12-person jury, but the record shows the jury included two blacks and one American Indian.
Robinson came close to death in January 2007, but a judge blocked his scheduled execution. His victim, 17-year-old Erik Tornblom, was shot in the face after he agreed to give Robinson and another man a ride from a convenience store. A co-defendant, Roderick Williams, is serving a life sentence.
In his opening statement, Cumberland County Assistant District Attorney Rob Thompson said the prosecution's case would involve more than the statistics that the defense offered as evidence last week.
"Statistics alone are not sufficient to complete the factual picture about capital cases in North Carolina," Thompson said.
The prosecution will show that race wasn't a significant factor in the selection of capital case juries in Cumberland County or North Carolina, he said. Weeks will "see that it's not appropriate to abandon work done by the court, defense attorneys, prosecutors and appellate courts," Thompson said.
A defense witness testified last week that qualified black jurors were struck at the rate of 50 percent, while non-black jurors were struck at a rate of 14.3 percent in Robinson's case. That meant that blacks were 3.5 times more likely to be struck than whites, the witness said.
Thompson said his evidence would show that black potential jurors had the same chance of serving on Robinson's jury as whites.
Gov. Bev Perdue vetoed lawmakers' attempt to repeal the Racial Justice Act, and the legislature was unable to override that veto earlier this year.
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