In a landmark ruling, a North Carolina judge vacated the death penalty Friday of a convicted murderer, saying prosecutors across the state had engaged for years in a deliberate and systematic pattern of racial discrimination while striking black potential jurors in death penalty cases. In a 167-page order harshly critical of prosecutors, Superior Court Judge Gregory Weeks said they "intentionally used the race of (jury pool) members as a significant factor in decisions to exercise peremptory strikes in capital cases." He ruled that discrimination was a factor not only in the case Weeks heard involving convicted murderer Marcus Reymond Robinson, who is black, but also in capital cases involving black defendants across North Carolina. The ruling was the first under North Carolina's Racial Justice Act, passed in 2009, which allows judges to reduce death sentences to life in prison without parole in cases where defendants prove racial bias in jury selection. Prosecut...