A prison abolitionist beat out the incumbent judge in a Democratic primary in North Carolina, according to unofficial election results posted by the state’s Board of Elections.
Hebekah Cannon defeated Judge Cecilia Oseguera with 52% of the vote in Tuesday’s primary election for the state’s District 26, which covers Charlotte and the rest of Mecklenburg County.
Ms. Cannon, 33, now has a clear path to the bench since no Republicans are running in this fall’s general election.
The former public defender who later opened her own criminal defense firm, named the Law Office of Habekah B. Cannon PLLC, described herself as an “abolitionist” on her firm’s website.
An archived version of the website from 2023 said Ms. Cannon’s firm “envisions a world where people are not enslaved behind bars and cages. Where people are not brutally policed and criminalized because of their race, beliefs, sexual orientation, and socioeconomic status.”
The older version said a central goal of her practice is to “loosen the tight grip of the criminal justice system that too often disportionately effects [sic] marginalized communities.”
An archived copy of Ms. Cannon’s website from 2022 was even more vociferous about her progressive bona fides and called the firm “wholeheartedly abolitionist.”
The 2022 copy said the law firm strived to defend people from misdemeanors that “criminalize survival,” such as theft, prostitution, trespassing, fare evasion and soliciting alms.
“We will also take cases such as resisting a public officer and assault on a government official on a case by case basis due to the fact that officers often tack on these charges for poor, Black and Brown people as an intimidation tactic,” the 2022 version of the site reads.
All the copy on the site mentioning prison abolitionism was scrubbed from the site before 2024. It now makes scant mention of progressive legal causes.
Ms. Cannon was fired from her job as a public defender in 2020 after being arrested while volunteering with an abolitionist group during Black Lives Matter protests in Charlotte, according to the Queen City Nerve.
None of those arrests resulted in convictions against Ms. Cannon, court records show.
