Probably like you, I’m still trying to figure out how in the world Blanche Taylor Moore is claiming racial bias in her 1990 death sentence in the poisoning death of her former boyfriend. No media account I’ve read answers that question.
The Burlington Times-News cites the motion filed by Moore’s lawyers:
In the 32-page motion for appropriate relief submitted Aug. 4, Washington, D.C.,-based attorneys William W. Taylor III, Blair G. Brown and Steven N. Herman outline Moore’s case and the ways racial bias could have contributed to its outcome.
The attorneys rely on studies of North Carolina cases since 1990 by professors at Michigan State University, the University of Colorado and Northeastern University that show eligible minority jurors were eliminated from jury panels at a higher rate than white jurors and that a death sentence was 2.6 times more likely to be imposed in cases where murder victims were white.
On the day Moore was found guilty in 1990, attorneys moved to strike the death penalty citing higher death-sentence rates in cases where victims were white. The judge denied the motion.
Motions for death-row inmates sentenced in Guilford Count cite the same study.
