Death penalty appeal alleges racial bias RALEIGH, N.C., Feb. 14 (UPI) -- A convicted killer in North Carolina is challenging his death sentence, contending prosecutors deliberately eliminated blacks from his jury. Lawyers for Marcus Robinson say his sentence violates the Racial Justice Act of 2009, The Fayetteville Observer reported. Robinson, who is black, was given the death sentence for killing Erick Tornblom, 17, who was white, in a 1991 robbery. George Woodworth, a retired statistics professor at the University of Iowa, testified for Robinson. Woodworth challenged the work of Joseph Katz, an applied statistician who said his findings did not suggest racial bias. On Monday, Christopher Cronin, a political scientist at Methodist University, testified that blacks might be more likely to be dismissed from juries in death penalty cases because they are less likely to support the death penalty and more likely to see the system as unfair. "Race as a variable is one of the variables, and may simply indicate a minority population that has a cultural and political ideology that would make it less likely to be favored by the majority population, which is represented by the state," Cronin said. And the state's interest is to represent that majority population and its intent for laws, punishment, etc. Robinson's jury included nine whites, two blacks and one American Indian. If he wins, he would receive an automatic sentence of life without parole.