Case Summary
In cases that highlighted the intersection between our justice system reform and voting rights work, Southern Coalition for Social Justice represented five individuals who were charged in Alamance County, North Carolina, with voting while ineligible due to criminal convictions.
We filed motions to dismiss the charges on the grounds that the statute allowing the state to seek felony convictions without proving knowledge or fraudulent intent was unconstitutionally enacted with racial animus and the intent to suppress the African-American vote. All of the felony charges were dismissed when our clients entered Alford pleas to misdemeanor obstruction of justice.
Why it's Important
The law that the "Alamance Five" was prosecuted under represents the last relics of Jim Crow measures meant to disenfranchise Black people and impede their efforts to help North Carolinians access the ballot. For more than 145 years, the voices of North Carolinians with felony convictions, many Black North Carolinians, were chilled by the selective and arbitrary enforcement of the law. The law has since been ruled unconstitutional.
