INSTITUTE INDEX: A blow to racial justice in North Carolina

Date on which the Republican-controlled North Carolina House voted to repeal the remaining sections of the Racial Justice Act, a state law that allows death row inmates to have their sentences commuted to life without parole if they can prove racial bias played a role in their cases: 6/4/2013

Date on which the Republican-controlled state Senate also voted for the repeal legislation, which Gov. Pat McCrory (R) has said he would sign into law: 4/3/2013

Year in which North Carolina Republican leaders first repealed a significant portion of the act, which brought a halt to executions in the state: 2012

Number of other states with similar laws allowing retroactive appeals of death sentences for racial bias: 0

Number of challenges to death sentences that have been filed under the 2009 law: more than 150

Number of Racial Justice Act claims that have not yet been heard in court that would be invalidated by the repeal: more than 140

Total number of people on death row in North Carolina: 152

Number of death row inmates who had their sentences converted to life without parole under the law: 4

In one of those cases, involving the murder prosecution of an African-American man named Quintel Augustine, percent of potential black jurors who Cumberland County prosecutors struck from the case: 100

According to a major statistical study of jury selection practices in North Carolina capital cases, number of times more likely juries were to sentence a defendant to death if at least one of the victims was white: more than 2.5

According to the same study, number of times more likely prosecutors in the state are to remove blacks from a potential jury pool as they are whites: more than 2

The probability of that disparity happening in a race-neutral jury selection process: 1 in 10 trillion

(Click on figure to go to source.)