News Roundup

In the waning weeks of his four-year term, President Biden announced commutations of 37 of 40 federal death sentences. With the exception of three individuals convicted of crimes involving “terrorism” or “hate-motivated mass murder,” Biden decided that the remaining federal death row prisoners should receive sentences of life without the possibility of parole. In 2021, Biden declared a moratorium on federal capital punishment to study protocols, and before that, he pledged action to end the death penalty at the federal level. The families of the victims reacted to the commutations with a range of emotions. Commutations in NC. In a parallel decision, on his last day in office, Governor Cooper commuted the death sentences of 15 of 136 individuals on North Carolina’s death row. Cooper pointed to a wide range of factors in explaining how he came to his decision, including the facts of the cases, input from prosecutors and victims’ families, the defendants’ criminal history and prison record, the defendants’ mental capacity, the potential influence of race on the proceedings, the age of the defendants, the sentences of co-defendants, and more. One of the individuals who received a commutation, Hasson Bacote, had a hearing in Johnston County Superior Court last August after filing suit under the now-repealed Racial Justice Act some 14 years previously. Bacote challenged his death sentence as unjust, alleging that race was a significant factor in the decision to seek or impose the death penalty. It is unclear at this point if the litigation will be deemed [...]