N.C. Ruling Is a Step Toward Honesty About Death Penalty’s Racism

A quarter century after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racism in the application of the death penalty doesn’t matter, we’re finally beginning to have an honest discussion about how we justify legally killing people.

On Apr. 20, a judge in North Carolina relied on a new state law to order that a death-row inmate’s sentence be reduced to life in prison, after finding that his trial had been so irreversibly tainted by racism that executing him would violate the Constitution.

I want to pause here to recognize the momentousness of this ruling: A judge in a Southern active death-penalty state just upheld the rule of law, even though it meant sparing the life of a convicted murderer.

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