Associated Press 
 
 A judge in North Carolina is determining whether to grant a new trial in the murder of Michael Jordan's father, James, per Michael Gordon and Mark Washburn of the Charlotte Observer. 
 
 In March 1996, a jury convicted Daniel Green of murder. Green's accomplice, Larry Martin Demery, testified that he and Green walked up to James Jordan's car with the intention of robbing him. Demery told the jury Green shot Jordan after he awoke from a nap and saw the two men outside his car. 
 
 However, Green's attorneys, Scott Holmes and Ian Mance, contend Demery pulled the trigger and that their client wasn't at the scene at the time of the murder. They've brought forth new evidence in order to get Green a new trial, according to court documents obtained by Gordon and Washburn. 
 
 Holmes and Mance have a sworn statement from the jury forewoman in Green's trial that says she investigated Jordan's murder on her own, which would've gone against the judge's orders. A former newspaper editor from Robeson County, North Carolina, also signed a sworn affidavit in which she described an admission by Demery that he committed the murder. 
 
 The attorneys also cast doubt on the evidence provided by a state forensics expert regarding Jordan's blood being found in Green's car. 
 
 The state of North Carolina has until the end of April to respond to Holmes and Mance's filing, and after that, Robeson County Superior Court Judge Robert Floyd will make a decision about a new trial. ||||| Prosecutors called other prosecutors, judges and a political scientist to bolster their claims that race is not among their considerations when weighing whether to strike a potential juror. 
 
 That study found that qualified black jurors  those not released for cause, such as opposition to the death penalty  were struck by prosecutors at nearly twice the rate as qualified white jurors. In Cumberland County, they were struck at 2.6 times the rate, according to the researchers. 
 
 Defense attorneys used a sweeping study of capital cases in North Carolina done by Michigan State University law school researchers to bolster their claims. 
 
 In selecting that panel, Robinsons defense team claimed, prosecutors struck half the blacks eligible for the jury and only 15 percent of those who were not black. 
 
 Defense attorneys for Robinson argued earlier this year that prosecutors struck blacks from the jury pool at a much higher rate than whites. The jury that sent Robinson to death row included nine white jurors, one American Indian and two blacks, according to court filings. 
 
 Cases he has presided over: In the mid-1990s, he presided over the court proceedings in Robeson County against the two men accused of killing James Jordan, father of basketball star Michael Jordan. 
 
 Other legal jobs: Weeks worked several years in private practice and was an assistant Cumberland County public defender for 10 years. 
 
 On the bench: 23 years. Recently announced plans to retire at the end of this year. 
 
 — Marcus Reymond Robinson will soon gather his few belongings from the cell on North Carolina’s death row where he has spent the past 18 years and make a historic move to a maximum-security prison cell. 
 
 The 39-year-old convicted murderer is the first North Carolina death row inmate to have his sentence converted to life without possibility of parole using the state’s fledgling and unique Racial Justice Act. 
 
 Under the 2-1/2-year-old law, Judge Gregory Weeks was able to weigh statistics while considering Robinson’s claims that racial bias played a role in his trial and sentence. 
 
 Prosecutors announced plans to appeal the Robinson decision, a challenge that could slow rulings in similar claims from 154 other death row inmates. 
 
 Weeks, Cumberland County’s chief resident Superior Court judge, read a summary of his findings Friday in a courtroom full of people keenly aware that they were witnessing a landmark ruling. 
 
 Robinson, wearing a white shirt and light-colored pants, sat at a table with his lawyers. The family of Erik Tornblom, the man Robinson killed in 1994, watched silently, though the disappointment showing on their faces spoke volumes. The family left the courthouse without commenting. 
 
 Weeks said that “race was a materially, practically and statistically significant factor” in the selection of a jury for Robinson’s trial. 
 
 Prosecutors, according to a Michigan State University Law School study, used peremptory challenges to remove blacks from juries more than twice as often throughout North Carolina as they used them for whites. 
 
 In Cumberland County, it was almost three times as often. 
 
 “When the government’s choice of jurors is tainted with racial bias, that overt wall casts down over the parties, the jury and the court to adhere to the law throughout the trial,” Weeks said. “The very integrity of the court is jeopardized when a prosecutor’s discrimination invites cynicism respecting the jury’s neutrality and undermines public confidence.” 
 
 Effect on other cases 
 
 Weeks’ findings that potential black jurors systematically had been left out of the process of capital cases in North Carolina and Cumberland County at the time of Robinson’s trial could play significantly in the cases of other death row inmates. Weeks said such decisions by prosecutors to strike African-Americans from potential jury pools undermined the courts and had a sweeping impact on the integrity and trust the community could place in the process. 
 
 Only a few inmates on North Carolina’s death row did not file Racial Justice Act claims. 
 
 The ruling, the first of its kind in this country, came two days before the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision that opened the door for states to adopt such laws as the Racial Justice Act. 
 
 North Carolina and Kentucky are the only two states that have done so, though. 
 
 The Racial Justice Act, which was narrowly adopted in 2009 along party lines, has been praised by supporters as a way to address blatant and subtle racism undermining the integrity of the state’s courts. 
 
 Weeks had harsh words for prosecutors, saying the evidence presented earlier this year by Robinson’s attorneys was enough “to support an inference of intentional discrimination.” 
 
 The judge and many of the defense lawyers and death penalty critics said they hoped the ruling Friday would mark the beginning of a new chapter in North Carolina justice. 
 
 “We had hoped for this decision, we had worked for this decision. We thought the judge’s decision was powerful,” said James Ferguson, a Charlotte civil rights attorney who represented Robinson. “We know our work is not over, but we think this is a beginning.” 
 
 District attorneys issued a statement strongly disputing that race is a significant factor in capital murder cases. 
 
 Legal scholars and death row critics from across the nation have watched with interest as the Robinson case went through the courts. 
 
 “The North Carolina legislation is a commendable attempt to do what the Supreme Court attempted to brush under the tablecloth,” said James Acker, a criminal justice professor at the State University of New York-Albany who is putting on a symposium this weekend about the death penalty and race. He was referring to the 1987 Supreme Court decision that opened the door for states to adopt laws that give judges the authority to consider statistics in racial bias challenges. 
 
 Robinson, who has been incarcerated at Central Prison only with death row inmates since his conviction, will move to a general prison population. For the first time in years, he will be among those who are not awaiting execution. 
 
 Shirley Burns, Robinson’s mother, described the moment as bittersweet. Her thoughts were with the Tornbloms, but she said the justice system should treat people fairly. 
 
 “There’s justice at last,” Shirley Burns said. “You’ve got to treat people right. You’ve got to treat people fair. That’s what we depend on when we go through the system.” 
 
 Blythe: 919-836-4948
– Twenty years later, the man found guilty of murdering Michael Jordan's father may get a fresh trial. Attorneys for the convicted gunman, Daniel Green, say the original trial was rife with problems that only now are coming to light, the Charlotte Observer reports. To recap, Green and Larry Demery were teenagers when they were tried for murdering 56-year-old James Jordan—whose son was an all-time great NBA player—during a 1993 carjacking in South Carolina. In the high-profile trial, Demery became a witness for the state and accused Green of pulling the trigger. With physical evidence apparently supporting Demery, both were found guilty and eligible for parole in 20 years, but Green got an added 10 years for conspiracy. Now Demery is up for parole consideration, and Green's attorneys are claiming that: The trial's jury forewoman broke the rules by conducting her own investigation of the murder. Other jurors may have violated orders by reading or seeing accounts of the case. A state forensics expert admits that her testimony about blood in the car (which supported Demery's version of events) was shaky, and she destroyed the only existing blood sample from James Jordan on a supervisor's orders. The editor of a local Native American newspaper said that during a jail interview, Demery admitted to pulling the trigger. The first person the killers called from James' car phone was a cocaine dealer who happened to be Robeson County Sheriff Hubert Stone's out-of-wedlock son, but the jury wasn't allowed to hear about the sheriff's connection. Details about that could undermine "the entire Jordan investigation," the attorneys say. A judge is likely to rule on the attorneys' request sometime after the end of April, says Bleacher Report.