RALEIGH, N.C. — The North Carolina Supreme Court says three death row prisoners are being resentenced to life without parole, after they ruled their sentences as unconstitutionally under the state’s Racial Justice Act.
Christina Walters, Quintel Augustine, and Tilmon Golphin will be taken off death row because they proved race was a significant factor in their sentences sending them to death row, according to a news release.
The N.C. Supreme Court says the decision made on September 25th is the final ruling in a series that affirms rights given under the 2009 Racial Justice Act, rights that had been wrongly taken away from death sentenced people who have provided evidence of racial discrimination in their trial and sentences.
“We are grateful to the court for upholding the law that says a person cannot be sentenced to death twice for the same crime,” says CDPL Senior Staff Attorney David Weiss. “Our clients proved that race was a major factor in their death sentences. Their evidence has never been disputed, and they never should have been sent back to death row.”
The decisions in these three cases are based on the state constitution and cannot be appealed, according to a news release.
After the North Carolina legislature passed the Racial Justice Act back in 2009, it led to a study proving in capital trials prosecutors dismissed Black citizens at 2.5 times the rate they excluded whites, crimes with white victims were twice as likely to punishable by death, and the disparity was driven entirely by race, according to a news release.
Supreme Court officials say Walters, Augustine, Golphin, and Marcus Robinson were the only four death row inmates to have Racial Justice Act hearings before the law was repealed in 2013, and all four won their cases showing a pattern of racial discrimination in North Carolina capital cases.
Back in 2012, the Cumblerland County Superior Court Judge Gregory Weeks resentenced all four to life without parole, after finding the exclusion of Black jurors had impacted their death sentences, according to a news release.
The court then overturned Weeks’ rulings after taking away the Racial Justice Act saying the hearings should have been held separately, and the N.C. Department of Public Safety returned them to death row, according to a news release.
The N.C. Supreme Court now says the death sentences were unconstitutional and has restored life sentences for all four.
“The court has again affirmed what we already knew,” Weiss says. “The Racial Justice Act was a necessary law that revealed an epidemic of racism in death penalty cases. We cannot sweep that evidence under the rug. And we certainly cannot execute people who’ve proven that racism played a part in their sentences.”
The N.C. Supreme Court says after a separate ruling in June, all North Carolina death row prisoners who filed Racial Justice Act claims, before the law’s 2013 repeal, are entitled to hearings to present their evidence.
