State v. Copley: Addressing Race During Closing Argument

Last month, the North Carolina Court of Appeals decided State v. Copley, __ N.C. App. __, 2019 WL 1996441 (May 7, 2019), in which a divided panel held that the trial court abused its discretion by overruling the defendant’s objections to the prosecutor’s remarks about race during closing argument. For that reason, the Court vacated the defendant’s first degree murder conviction. This post discusses the law governing when parties in a criminal trial may discuss issues of race, as well as emerging strategies for mitigating the effects of implicit racial bias on decision-makers. The Facts of the Case, the Prosecutor’s Argument, and the Court’s Ruling Briefly, Defendant Chad Copley was tried in Wake County Superior Court for shooting and killing 20-year old Kourey Thomas with a shotgun through the window of Copley’s garage. Thomas was crossing Copley’s yard after leaving a party at Copley’s neighbor’s house when Copley shot him. Copley relied on self-defense and defense of habitation. The jury found Copley guilty of first degree murder by premeditation and deliberation and by lying in wait. Copley is White and Thomas was Black; another approximately 20 partygoers standing outside of Copley’s house before the shooting were also Black. In the rebuttal portion of his closing argument, the prosecutor stated as follows: [THE STATE]:  [] I have at every turn attempted to not make this what this case is about. And at every turn, jury selection, arguments, evidence, closing argument, there’s been this undercurrent, right? What’s the undercurrent? The undercurrent that the [...]