ORONO, ME – A recent NC Newsline Opinion Commentary by Dannel Malloy, the former governor of Connecticut and now Chancellor of the University of Maine system, states he “spent much of (his) career in and around the criminal legal system learning firsthand that our system is far from perfect.”
Malloy’s commentary notes how he, during his time in office, was a “lead advocate in my state for abolishing capital punishment” despite how “three weeks ago, a North Carolina judge issued a decision in a case brought under the state’s Racial Justice Act that examined the impact of race in capital cases.”
The former governor writes in NC Newsline, “Hasson Bacote’s case was the only the fifth in which a Racial Justice Act petitioner was actually afforded the opportunity to present witnesses” where his sentence was affected by the “extensive evidence of the systemic exclusion of Black jurors and racially disproportionate sentencing outcomes.”
“Mr. Bacote’s legal team conducted an exhaustive review of approximately 680,000 pages of prosecutors’ notes and jury transcripts from every capital trial in North Carolina between 1980 and 2010 and found undeniable proof that race plays a central role in determining who gets to sit on juries and who is sentenced to death in death penalty cases,” said Malloy
The NC Newsline commentary added that “the court’s recognition of the pattern of racism in sentencing adds to a growing body of evidence showing that racial discrimination is not an anomaly in North Carolina’s death penalty system, it is a defining feature.”
Malloy added that “between 2007 and 2009, three Black men sentenced to death in North Carolina were exonerated after spending more than a decade each on death row, narrowly escaping execution for crimes they did not commit.”
Over the years, noted Malloy, many people, including “Gov. Roy Cooper cited continued concerns about the role of race in sentencing decisions when he announced he was commuting the sentences of 15 people on death row.”
Malloy concludes, “North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson and Gov. Josh Stein need to undertake a comprehensive investigation into the use of capital punishment in their state. Failing to act in the face of this undeniable evidence would be a tacit endorsement of a system that has disproportionately condemned Black defendants to death and excluded people in their state from the most important function of jury service.
“True leaders do not ignore injustice, they confront it head on. So yes, we need sober reflection. But what we need more urgently is action: an investigation, accountability, and a commitment to ensuring that racial bias no longer dictates who lives and who dies in North Carolina.”
