Racially based closing argument biased jury.

Byline: Matt Chaney

A Wake County man who was convicted of first-degree murder is entitled to a new trial because the trial judge allowed racially-charged statements from the prosecution during closing arguments that biased the jury, a divided North Carolina Court of Appeals panel has ruled.

Chad Copley shot and killed Kourey Thomas, who was in Copley's yard in the early morning hours of August 6, 2016. Prosecutors say that Copley was awakened by a neighbor's house party, and Thomas, who was leaving the party, was only passing through the yard to get to his friend's car when Copley shot him from inside his darkened garage without warning.

Copley contends that he had had a verbal altercation moments before the shooting with people who were parked in front of his home and being noisy, and that they had threatened him by showing him their guns. Copley says he retrieved his shotgun, loaded it, and went to his garage, from which he yelled for people to leave and warned them he was armed. Soon thereafter, he says, Thomas came running toward the house with a gun brandished, and Copley shot him through the window.

The jury convicted Copley of first-degree murder by premeditation and deliberation and by lying in wait, and Judge Michael O'Foghludha sentenced him to life in prison without parole. On appeal, Copley argued that O'Foghludha had erred in overruling his objections to a prosecutor's statements during closing arguments arguing that Copley, who is white, was frightened because the partygoers were black and likely would not have fired his gun if Thomas had been white.

Judge John Tyson, writing for the majority, said that "superfluous injections of race into closing arguments" is prohibited by Supreme Court precedent, as such "gratuitous appeals to racial prejudice 'tend to degrade the administration of justice.'" While claims of racial prejudice are relevant to prove motive in some cases, Tyson said these must only be raised in instances where the evidence supports this.

"[No] evidence presented to the jury in this case tends to suggest Defendant had a racially motivated reason for shooting Thomas," Tyson said. "Nothing in the evidence presented to the jury tends to support this assertion in the prosecutor's argument that Defendant feared or bore racial hatred towards the individuals outside of his home because they were black Race was irrelevant to Defendant's case."

The State's argument that Copley might have thought the individuals were...