FAYETTEVILLE — A prosecutor in the trial of the first death row prisoner to challenge his sentence under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act was three times more likely to dismiss blacks during jury selection for capital cases than other races, a researcher testified Tuesday.

The testimony came on the second day of the hearing in Cumberland County involving Marcus Robinson, a black man who in 1994 was convicted of the 1991 shooting death of 17-year-old Erik Tornblom, who was white. The Racial Justice Act gives death row prisoners a chance to argue that racial bias played a role in their cases.

The Fayetteville Observer reportedthat the prosecutor in Robinson’s trial was John Dickson, who is now a Cumberland County District Court judge. Last year, Dickson was subpoenaed to testify at this hearing.

If he wins his claim, Robinson would be sentenced to life in prison without parole, according to the law, which was passed in 2009 and survived a legislative challenge late last year.(backslash)

The Fayetteville Observer reported that researcher Barbara O’Brien of Michigan State University said that in three trials she examined, Dickson was 3.3 times more likely to strike a potential black juror than other jurors, O’Brien said.

On Monday, she testified that Dickson peremptorily struck half of the eligible black jurors during Robinson’s trial, but only 14.3 percent of the non-black jurors. Lawyers are allowed to remove a certain number of potential jurors at their discretion, but race is not supposed to be a factor.

Robinson’s lawyers are trying to show that black jurors were illegally excluded based on race from serving on North Carolina death cases.

Prosecutor Jonathan Perry of Union County began cross examining O’Brien, questioning her on her methodology.

O’Brien said she hired lawyers to read trial transcripts and other court documents to ascertain information about potential jurors, such as their race, age and gender. Perry showed O’Brien an example where her team had made an error in how they classified a juror’s information, and she acknowledged the mistake.

“We did the best we could to be as accurate as possible,” she said.