Racial bias tainted the decision to strike Black people from the jury pool and to impose the death penalty in the 2009 trial of a Black man in North Carolina, a judge ruled on Friday, part of what he called “glaring” patterns of bias in a prosecutorial district outside the capital.

A North Carolina judge is expected to rule Friday on whether a Black defendant’s capital trial was undermined by allegations of racial bias during jury selection, potentially opening the door to death row inmates throughout the state getting resentenced.