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To prove either one of the three categories would be no easy feat. Many capital punishment defendants felt like that this would be their ticket to getting a second chance at getting their sentence either commuted to a life sentence without the possibility of parole or even being exonerated totally. When this legislation first became a law, death row inmates that felt they were discriminated against because of their race, they began their journey on proving that race was a factor in them getting their death penalty sentence. .
In 2012, a judge named Gregory Weeks got the opportunity to try four cases of death row defendants that claimed their sentence was due to their race. Judge Weeks, when asked about these cases explained "there were intentional biases of the prosecutors in all four cases. " One of the cases was tried by itself and then the other three were tried together. Judge Weeks used a statistical study that was done by the Michigan State University College of Law. The study that was done by the Michigan State University College of Law showed that there was a racial bias in removing African Americans from juries in death penalty cases has occurred in 96 of North Carolina's 100 counties. Also, this study showed that prosecutors were more than twice as likely to remove qualified African Americans from a jury as members of any other race for more than 20 years. They looked at the time period between the years of 1990 to 2010. .
In one of the above referenced cases, it looked to Judge Weeks that the words and actions of the lead prosecutor showed significant racial bias in the jury selection process (NY Times). It was determined that the lead prosecutor had a glorified "cheat sheet " to where they had a determined system to dismiss African American jurors, without ever even mentioning their race. One example of how the lead prosecutor would dismiss African American jurors was when a prospective African American juror was dismissed because of where she lived.
