Murder conviction upheld in racially charged homeowner shooting

The NC Supreme Court Friday ruled against Chad Copley, the white Raleigh homeowner who shot and killed a black party-goer in his yard, arguing that his racially charged trial was not tainted when prosecutors brought up “the elephant in the room.”

Copley, 42, shot through his garage window in 2016 and killed Kourey Thomas as the 20-year-old walked across Copley’s front yard, having left a party a few doors down in Raleigh’s Neuse Crossing neighborhood.

The shooting drew comparisons to the Trayvon Martin case in Florida, in which an unarmed black teen was killed by George Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watchman. After Thomas was killed, a lawyer representing his family described Copley as “George Zimmerman 2.0.”

Copley had called 911 and reported “hoodlums racing up and down the street” and was recorded saying “I’m going to kill him” before the operator picked up.

In his 2018 trial, Wake County Assistant District Attorney Patrick Latour told the jury in his closing arguments, “Let’s talk about the elephant in the room. ... Ask yourself if Kourey Thomas and these people outside were a bunch of white males walking around wearing N.C. State hats, is he laying dead bleeding in that yard?”

Last year, the state Court of Appeals overturned the conviction arguing that the trial judge erred by overruling objections from Copley’s attorneys and not instructing the jury to disregard the statement. Race in Copley’s case was “irrelevant,” the court wrote, granting Copley a new trial.

But the Supreme Court reversed that decision, upholding the original murder conviction.

“Prejudice is not a quantifiable commodity,” wrote Justice Robin Hudson. “Statements cannot be assigned a number on a scale from which we can determine whether one statement here is more or less prejudicial than one in another case. Rather, the purpose in a prejudice analysis is to determine whether there is a reasonable possibility that the jury would have acquitted the defendant had his objection to the state’s argument been sustained. It is a defendant’s burden to show this.

“...The defendant has failed to provide a persuasive argument that there was a reasonable possibility the jury would have acquitted him absent the prosecutor’s comments about race.”