By Joe Palazzolo
Our colleague Steve Eder was in Fayettville, N.C., today for Judge Gregory Weeks’s much-anticipated ruling in the first case brought under the state’s controversial Racial Justice Act. The 2009 law requires judges to change a capital sentence to life without parole if race is determined to have been a “significant factor” in the sentence.
As Eder reported here, Judge Weeks overturned the death sentence of Marcus Reymond Robinson, who was convicted in 1994 of murdering a white 17-year-old during a robbery. The judge said “prosecutors intentionally discriminated against” potential black jurors during jury selection.
The decision, embedded below, could set a precedent for what happens with the state’s 156 other condemned prisoners.
M Robinson RJA Order