Racial bias tainted the decision to strike Black people from the jury pool and to impose the death penalty in the 2009 trial of a Black man in North Carolina, a judge ruled on Friday, part of what he called “glaring” patterns of bias in a prosecutorial district outside the capital. Hasson Bacote was among a group of 15 death row inmates whose sentences were commuted to life without parole last year by Gov. Roy Cooper in one of his final acts in office.
At the heart of the drama in the Public Service Commission of 2025 is a former commission President with a history of campaign and ethics violations...