Jury selection expert testified to race as "statistically significant factor" in Johnston County death sentence

Testimony continued Tuesday as a death row inmate appeals his conviction, arguing that racial bias played a role.

Hasson Bacote's attorneys are trying to prove that Black people were unfairly excluded from the jury that heard his 2009 murder case. Bacote faces the death penalty, convicted in the 2007 murder of a man during a robbery in Johnston County.

On Tuesday, Barbara O'Brien, a Michigan State University law professor who has researched jury selections, testified about her research into North Carolina capital cases. Asked specifically about Bacote's case and prosecutor Gregory Butler, she said, "It is my opinion that race was a statistically significant factor."

Bacote's guilty verdict was decided by a jury that had 10 white people and two Black people.

His attorneys are challenging the death sentence under the terms of North Carolina's now-repealed Racial Justice Act which lets death row inmates appeal their sentence on the basis of racism in their prosecution. Bacote's appeal began while that was still the law.

The trial is expected to last for weeks, with social scientists and historians weighing in with expert testimony.