The Death Penalty in the OSCE Area committed shortly after his release from a mental hospital.120 He had a long family history of mental illness and made a number of suicide attempts.121 In February 2012, Robert Moorman was executed by Arizona, despite suffering from mental retardation and attending special education classes as a child.122 At the time of writing, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was considering the merits of two cases against the United States concerning the imposition of the death penalty on persons with mental or intellectual disabilities.123 Non-discrimination Studies have shown that race can play a significant role in capital proceedings in the United States, including in charging decisions, sentencing and jury selection. In September 2011, Michigan State University released a study into jury selection in North Carolina that revealed that race was a significant factor in prosecutorial decisions to exercise peremptory challenges in jury selection in capital cases. Peremptory challenges allow a party to remove a juror without providing reasons for the objection. Prosecutors used such challenges to remove qualified “African-American” jurors at more than twice the rate that they excluded “white” jurors. Of the 159 death row inmates in North Carolina, 31 were sentenced by all-white juries, and another 38 had only one member of a minority on their jury when sentenced. 124 This study was used as a basis for the first ruling under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act. The landmark law, which passed in August 2009, allows capital defendants to challenge their sentence by showing that racial bias was a significant factor in decisions to seek or impose the death penalty. The Act does not require the inmate to prove discrimination in his or her particular case; it is sufficient for him or her to show evidence of statewide racial discrimination. In the first hearing in April 2012, Judge Gregory Weeks found statistical evidence of racial bias in the judicial system, as part of his deliberations concerning the case of Marcus Robinson, who was sentenced to death in 1994. The judge concluded that “race was a significant factor in decisions of prosecutors to exercise peremptory strikes in Cumberland County, the former Second 120  “Question of the Death Penalty”, U.N. Secretary General,, 2 July 2012, (U.N. Secretary General Report 2012)<http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/5051d31a2.html>. 121  “Mental Illness: Mississippi Inmate with Severe Mental Illness Faces Imminent Execution”, Death Penalty Information Center, 2 February 2012, <http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/mental-illness-mississippi-inmate-severe-mental-illnessfaces-imminent-execution>. 122  U.N. Secretary General Report 2012, op. cit., note 120. 123  Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Report No. 63/12 on admissibility petition 1762-11, Virgilio Maldonado Rodríguez v. United States, 29 March 2012; No. 132/11 on admissibility petition No. 194-04, Gregory Thompson v. United States, 19 October 2011, <www.oas.org/en/iachr/decisions/admissibilities.asp>. 124  Barbara O’Brien & Catherine M Grosso, “Report on Jury Selection”, 29 September 2011, <http://www.aclu.org/ files/assets/jss_revised_report_with_appendix_29_sept_2011.pdf >. 25