North Carolina governor makes shock move regarding 15 death row inmates on his last day in office

The governor of North Carolina reduced the death sentence of 15 inmates to life without parole on his last day in office.

Governor Roy Cooper, who was previously the attorney general for 16 years, has been barred from seeking a third consecutive term and will officially hand the torch to fellow Democrat Josh Stein when he takes the oath of office on Wednesday, NPR reported.

But in one of his final acts in office, Cooper commuted the death sentences of 15 men convicted of murder on Tuesday – officially reducing the state’s death row population by more than 10 percent.

‘These reviews are among the most difficult decisions a Governor can make and the death penalty is the most severe sentence that the state can impost,’ he said in a news release.

‘After thorough review, reflection and prayer, I have concluded that the death sentence imposed on these 15 people should be commuted, while ensuring they will spend the rest of their lives in prison.’

North Carolina is one of 27 states that offer the death penalty as a form of criminal punishment, despite no execution being carried out in the state since 2006.

And before his ultimate decision on Tuesday, there were 136 offenders awaiting death – 89 of which having submitted clemency petitions. 

While Cooper insisted that there was no single factor in determining his decision, he took ‘potential influence of race, such as the race of the defendant and victim, composition of the jury pool and the final jury’ into consideration, NBC News reported.

The State Department of Adult Correction listed 13 out of the 15 receiving a reduced sentence as black with their conviction dates ranging from 1993 to 2011, NPR reported.

One of the inmates receiving a lighter sentence is Hasson Bacote – a now 38-year-old man convicted of first-degree murder in Johnson County in 2009 and sentenced to death by 10 white and two Black jurors.

Bacote challenged his sentence under the Racial Justice Act of 2009 – an act allowing prisoners to receive life without parole if they can show that racial bias was the reason for their death sentence. 

But in 2013, Republican Pat McCrory, the then-governor, repealed the law – arguing that it ‘created a judicial loophole to avoid the death penalty and not a path to justice’, NBC News reported.

Yet the Supreme Court ruled in favor of many inmates in 2020, allowing those who already filed challenges to move ahead with the process. 

Sermons began reviewing Bacote’s case this past February following multiple challenges being filed on behalf of the condemned man, one being the American Civil Liberties Union in North Carolina.

He has been being held in a Raleigh prison as death sentences remain halted in the state due to legal disputes and issues obtaining drugs needed for lethal injection. 

During Bacote’s two-week trial court hearing, several historians, social scientists and statisticians testified that the jury selection in Johnson County had long been infected by racism. 

Johnson County, which is a majority-white suburban area near Raleigh, frequently displayed Ku Klux Klan billboards during the Jim Crow era.

His legal team also provided evidence that pointed to the fact that the death penalty was one-and-a-half times more likely to be sought and given to a black defendant in Johnson County as well as two times more likely ‘in cases with minority defendants’.

Governor-elect Josh Stein, the then-attorney general, sought to delay Bacote’s hearing – arguing that the claims made by his lawyers were based, in part, off a previous study that the Supreme Court had already found to be ‘unreliable and fatally flawed’.

While the attorney general’s office said in the court filing that racial bias in a jury selection is ‘abhorrent’, they added that a ‘claim of racial discrimination cannot be presumed based on the mere assertion of a defendant; it must be proved’. 

Bacote’s hearing before a judge using the law was considered a test case. 

Guy LeGrande – a man convicted of killing a woman in 1993 whose estranged husband offered to pay him a portion of a life insurance policy in Stanly County – was another inmate whose sentence was commuted, NPR reported.

His attorney’s claimed that he was mentally ill but he was still set to be executed in late 2006 – but his death never went through as a judge temporarily halted his case.

Another inmate granted life without parole is Christopher Roseboro – a man convicted of murder and rape in the death of a 72-year-old Gastonia woman in 1992.

The number of people sentenced to death has dwindled in recent years due to lawyers having more power in the decision of whether or not to try a capital case.

But even after Cooper’s decision, North Carolina remains the fifth-largest death row population in the country.

Death sentence opposition groups have long been urging Cooper for a complete commutation for all inmates on death row, but they still praised him for what they call a ‘historic act of clemency’.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Legal Defense Fund and the Center for Death Penalty Litigation are just some of those who applauded Cooper’s move.

‘This decision is a historic step towards ending the death penalty in North Carolina,’ Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project, said in a statement, NBC reported.

Chantal Stevens, the executive director of the ACLU, released a separate statement on the decision, adding to Stubbs’ appraisal, NPR reported. 

‘Cooper joins the ranks of a group of courageous leaders who used their executive authority to address the failed death penalty,’ Stevens said.

‘We have long known that the death penalty in North Carolina is racially biased, unjust and immoral, and the Governor’s actions today pave the way for our state to move towards a new era of justice.’

This is the second time Cooper received national attention this year alone. He had previously surfaced as a potential running mate for Kamala Harris ahead of the presidential election.

Just last week, President Joe Biden made announced that he was reducing the sentences of 37 out of the 40 people on federal death row – changing their punishment to life imprisonment.