23 August 2020 :
N.C. Supreme Court pulls Racial Justice Act murder defendant off death row. The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday vacated the death sentence of Marcus Robinson, 47, Black, who in 2012 was the 1st of 4 people to use the state's controversial Racial Justice Act to be removed from death row. Robinson is in prison for the murder and robbery of 17-year-old Erik Tornblom in 1991. The Racial Justice Act of 2009 allowed death row inmates to petition the courts to review whether racial bias in the criminal justice system influenced their trials and the jury decisions to sentence them to death. It was lauded by some for its effort to address decades of systemic racism in the criminal justice system and criticized by others as part of a long-term effort to abolish the death penalty. Robinson and three other defendants used the Racial Justice Act in 2011 and 2012 to persuade Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks that the prosecutors in their murder trials were racially biased in their selection of jurors — that they used their power to strike potential jurors to keep Blacks off the juries under a premise that a Black person would be less likely to convict or vote for a death sentence. Weeks in 2012 re-sentenced Robinson and the other 3 defendants from Fayetteville-area homicides to life in prison without parole, and they were removed from death row. The legislature, citing these cases, repealed the Racial Justice Act in 2013, but the 4 remained off death row until the Supreme Court in late 2015 ruled that Weeks made errors at the Racial Justice Act hearings in 2011 and 2012 and the cases need to be done over. The defendants were returned to death row. In 2017, Superior Court Judge W. Edwin Spainhour said the defendants could no longer use the Racial Justice Act because it had been repealed. Friday's 4-3 ruling, with the majority opinion written by Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, overturns Spainhour. Beasley said Robinson's constitutional right against double jeopardy was violated when his death sentence was re-imposed in 2016. Once a death penalty is canceled, she said, court precedents say it cannot be put back on a defendant. She said Robinson's sentence should be life in prison without parole as specified when the Racial Justice Act was enacted in 2009. Friday’s decision could allow the other 3 Racial Justice Act defendants to also come off death row. The Supreme Court ruled earlier this summer that the repeal of the law cannot be applied retroactively. This paves the way for more than 100 death row inmates to get the relief they sought while the 2009 law was in place.
