The North Carolina Court of Appeals has upheld the conviction of a former Graham man who was sentenced in 2023 to life in prison for first-degree murder stemming from a drive-by shooting in Burlington in September 2019.
Jeremiah Ezeil Hardaway, 25, black, male, appealed his conviction on grounds that Wake County visiting special superior court judge Craig Croom had erred in denying his Batson challenge to the prosecutor’s “peremptory challenge” that resulted in the exclusion of a potential juror, a black male identified as “Eric M,” based on his race.
Hardaway also unsuccessfully appealed his conviction based on his claim that Croom, the visiting judge who presided over his trial in Alamance County superior court in September 2023, had erred in denying his motion to dismiss all charges due to insufficient evidence. (Several related, lesser felony charges were subsequently dismissed.)
Hardaway was convicted of murdering Myson Russell, Jr. in Burlington in conjunction with what initially began as an argument between two groups of people at a Walmart on September 8, 2019. The argument “continued online through messages on social media platforms” and escalated to the shooting the next night, according to the case background.
Then 19, Hardaway had been living at 508 East Harden Street, Apartment F, in Graham when he was charged in September 2019, according to the Alamance County court record.
On September 9, 2019, “after an unsuccessful attempt at a fight,” Russell was walking with several friends to a house in Burlington when Hardaway passed them in his black PT Cruiser, along with two other cars “full of people,” according to the case background. “This group drove to a nearby church parking lot and rearranged themselves among the vehicles,” but shortly afterward, “multiple witnesses heard gunshots.”
An eyewitness later testified at Hardaway’s trial in Alamance County superior court that he heard a shot, saw Hardaway “holding a gun,” and “saw sparks before he took off,” according to the case background. At the conclusion of his seven-day trial, the jury convicted Hardaway of first-degree murder and sentenced him to life without parole.
Hardaway argued on appeal that Croom had erred in denying his Batson challenge, based on the defendant’s claim that the prosecutor had excluded a potential black male juror solely because of his race.
The case background states, “The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the defendant that the State will not exclude members of his race from the jury venire on account of race, or on the false assumption that members of his race as a group are not qualified to serve as jurors.” (A 1986 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Batson v. Kentucky established that peremptory challenges to exclude potential jurors solely on the basis of race violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.)
“In this case, the State removed the only black juror who had yet participated in voir dire [questioning by the prosecutor and the defense prior to being empanelled],” the case notes. “This statistical evidence may favor a finding of purposeful discrimination, but we note that bare statistics do not carry as much weight as other factors, particularly as a small sample size can skew strike and acceptance rate data.”
Instead, the visiting judge found that “there was no evidence the case was particularly susceptible to racial discrimination,” according to the unanimous opinion that the Appeals Court issued Wednesday. “There was no indication of disparate questioning of jurors. [The] defendant does not argue, at trial or on appeal, that these factors support a finding of purposeful discrimination.”
Hardaway is currently incarcerated at the Bertie Correctional Institution, a “close-security” prison for men in Windsor, which is about 21 miles south of Edenton.
The Court of Appeals unanimously concluded that there had been no error during Hardaway’s trial in Alamance County.
Appeals Court judge Jefferson Griffin concurred with the opinion; judge Chris Dillon concurred in a separate opinion; and judge Toby Hampson concurred with the result only.
