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N.C. governor delays execution due to terror attack disruption

By Caroline Nolan
CNN Producer

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley postponed the execution of death-row inmate Robert Bacon Tuesday, citing disruption to the judicial system caused by last week's terrorist attacks.

The execution has been rescheduled for October 5, the statement said.

Bacon had been scheduled to be put to death this Friday for the 1987 murder of Glennie Clark, his lover's estranged husband. A decision Tuesday morning by a North Carolina federal district court, issued only an hour before Easley's statement, had denied Bacon's civil rights claims and had appeared to clear the way for the execution.

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On Monday afternoon, the United States Supreme Court denied Bacon's application for a stay of his execution. Bacon's application had argued Easley should not be permitted to consider clemency for Bacon, because he had served as a county prosecutor and state attorney general during Bacon's murder trials.

Bacon's attorneys also argued to the Supreme Court that an all-white jury's 1991 decision to put Bacon to death was influenced by racial discrimination within the jury. His claims relied primarily on a May 10, 2001 affidavit, filed by a juror who voted to convict and execute Bacon. The affidavit claimed the jury's deliberations were influenced by racial discrimination.

"Some jurors felt that it was wrong for a black man to date a white woman" and believed "that black people commit more crime and that it is typical of blacks to be involved in crime," the affidavit stated. Bacon is black; both his victim and his lover, Bonnie Clark, were white. Clark was also convicted of first-degree murder, but received a life sentence.

Bacon's attorney, Gretchen Engel, had said early Tuesday that this morning's dismissal had exhausted all possible legal avenues in United States courts. Without a decision from Easley granting clemency, Bacon's execution was likely to go forward on Friday, Engel said.

Following the issuing of the stay, Engel said she though the decision was appropriate in light of last week's events.

"Given the issues at stake here, which is racial justice, it is vital we focus on the case. These events are connected. Here we are with our most fundamental institutions coming under attack and it is so important to preserve core values. Preeminent among those is equality under the law, which I believe my client did not receive," Engel said.

Engel acknowledged the two-week stay does not provide her with additional legal options, but plans to spend the time garnering public support. The Inter-American Court on Human Rights, an international judicial body, has agreed to grant Bacon a hearing on his racial discrimination claims, but that hearing, which was scheduled for September 28, has now been postponed due to the terrorism attacks. A new hearing date has not yet been scheduled by the Court, Engel said, and it is unclear whether that hearing will occur before October 5.

Bacon's legal battle has already drawn support from the National Urban League, the NAACP, Amnesty International, several members of Congress, and four former North Carolina Supreme Court justices, all of whom have urged Easley to grant clemency and commute bacon's sentence to life imprisonment.