North Carolina Supreme Court

Like it or not, Cheri Beasley's tenure as Chief Justice will be defined in large part by her response to COVID-19.

Election Day month rolls on with a recount in the North Carolina Chief Justice Supreme Court contest. A crowded field of candidates is forming for a vacant U.S. Senate seat. In our latest review of North Carolina politics, Aisha Dew and Becki Gray discuss those races, the likelihood Republicans will decriminalize marijuana, and what they're appreciative for this November.

County elections boards have finalized their official vote tallies. Still, on Friday the race to be chief justice of the state Supreme Court looked almost certainly headed for a recount.  

Meanwhile, the Democratic challenger in the U.S. Senate race conceded this week. And a former Wake County Public Schools superintendent moved into a top (interim) role at the Pentagon. 

Host Jeff Tiberii, Rob Schofield of NC Policy Watch and Becki Gray of the John Locke Foundation review those stories along with the latest grim pandemic news.

The North Carolina Supreme Court banned the state from reinstating the death sentence on a Black man named Marcus Robinson last Friday. Robinson was removed from death row in 2012  and sentenced to life without parole after a North Carolina judge found that his trial was influenced by racial discrimination in the jury. At Robinson’s original trial, the prosecution removed half of qualified Black jurors from serving — but only 15% of white jurors. 

The first black person elected to the North Carolina General Assembly in the 20th Century. ... First to win a statewide election. ... First to be the state's chief justice. 

But he had hurdles to jump to even enter civic life when he went to register to vote in the 1950s. 

Henry Frye, now 87, discusses public life, voter suppression, and one way to a long marriage on this episode of the WUNC Politics Podcast. 
 

Gov. Roy Cooper appointed Court of Appeals Judge Mark Davis to the North Carolina Supreme Court. Davis succeeds Cheri Beasley who last month became the first African-American woman to serve as a supreme court justice for the state.

The North Carolina Supreme Court released a ruling Friday over who is in charge of running the state’s public schools: the State Schools Superintendent or the State Board of Education. After the decision was unveiled, both sides claimed victory.

The North Carolina House and Senate have approved new plans for dozens of district boundaries. 

The 1979 North Carolina Supreme Court ruling in State v. Way declared that women cannot legally revoke consent during a sexual encounter. 

Early voting is underway in North Carolina's second primary of the year. Two incumbent members of Congress face off against each other. Also on the ballot is a seat on the state's Supreme Court.

At the legislature, the Senate wraps up its budget proposal and lawmakers move behind closed doors to hash out a compromise between the House and Senate plans.

Host Frank Stasio talks with political junkie Ken Rudin about the latest.

The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the North Carolina Supreme Court to reconsider the controversial redistricting measures taken by the legislature in 2011. 

The U.S. Supreme Court threw out the state court’s decision and instructed it to look again at these issues in light of the highest court’s rulings in a similar case in Alabama. At issue is whether the new lines are racially-based gerrymandering or permissible redistricting measures.

With five weeks to go before Election Day, candidates for the state’s highest court are trying to get some attention. And they’re spending more time raising campaign funds because the legislature eliminated state funding for judicial races last year.

Campaign ads for the Supreme Court are usually pretty civil. They're kind of like one from Justice Bob Hunter, in which a narrator says: "In the North Carolina Legal system, one quality must stand out: Fairness." In the video, three young people hold a sign that says "fairness" and a then flip it over to say, "Bob Hunter!"

The North Carolina Supreme Court is supposed to be above hyper-partisan politics, but what happens when groups from outside the state become the biggest donors? 

North Carolina’s U.S. Senate race isn’t the only one attracting lots of campaign money ahead of Tuesday’s primary.

Incumbent Supreme Court Justice Robin Hudson is facing two challengers. She also faces more than a half-million dollars in negative advertisements from out-of-state funders.

Some say money is changing the non-partisan tone of court races in North Carolina. In this race, people are talking about one particular television ad that concludes with:  

“Justice Robin Hudson. Not tough on child molesters. Not fair to victims.”

Elections for seats on the NC Supreme Court are purportedly nonpartisan. But one race this year is already infused with large outside donations and negative advertising. The state's highest court likely will rule on cases regarding redistricting, teacher tenure, voter ID laws and same-sex marriage in the coming year. Those contentious issues make the race for incumbent Democrat Robin Hudson's seat a particularly heated one. Hudson faces Republicans Eric Levinson and Jeannette Doran.