Kristin Collins, Author at The Center for Death Penalty Litigation

CDPL is hiring: Campaign Director

January 11, 2021 By Kristin Collins

The Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL) in Durham, North Carolina seeks to hire a Campaign Director to support its mission to end the death penalty and address racism in the criminal legal system.

CDPL is a non-profit law firm and advocacy organization that works to provide the highest quality representation to people facing execution. In addition to representing individual clients, CDPL spearheads litigation and public education campaigns that address systemic injustices and cast light on the arbitrariness and unfairness of our state’s capital punishment system.

CDPL is committed to exposing and challenging the racial bias inherent in the death penalty and to building an organizational culture of racial equity in all aspects of our work, from litigation and investigation to public education advocacy, and employment. CDPL is an equal opportunity employer, and we welcome qualified applicants of all races, ethnicities, genders, and sexual orientations. Our racial equity statement can be found here.

The position will involve local and state organizing to mobilize opposition to the death penalty. This work will continue CDPL’s efforts to draw attention to the wide ranging injustices in our capital punishment system, including racial disparities in the state’s death penalty through raising the voices of the African-American community, other people of color, and those directly affected by the criminal legal system. To support the campaign and CDPL’s broader work, the organizer will build and expand relationships with state criminal and racial justice organizations and media outlets. The ideal candidate will have a commitment to ending the death penalty and to racial justice, expertise in outreach to communities of color, and an organizer’s instincts.

Duties:

Acts as point person for the campaign to end the use of the death penalty in NC through developing strategy, goals, and plans for this work.
Develops relationships and partnerships with local and state organizations doing criminal justice and racial equity work in NC. Coordinates with national partner organizations.
Identifies needs in the field for the NC campaign and provides assistance and support in addressing those needs.
Builds and expands relationships with state racial justice organizations and media outlets through outreach, presentations, attendance at state/local conferences and events, and mobilization around specific cases, campaigns, and other movement-wide actions.
Designs and leads strategic planning sessions and trainings that help local organizations develop and implement their strategies.
Stays abreast of political opportunities and threats both at the local and state level, and helps the NC campaign consider the political climate and position itself accordingly.
Helps develop written materials for NC, including briefing documents, fact sheets, etc.
Builds consensus around developing and implementing campaign strategies.

Qualifications:

Minimum 1-3 years’ experience organizing on issue-based advocacy and/or political campaigns.
Direct experience and comfort working with communities of color and/or organizations that represent people of color, and directly affected individuals.
Excellent interpersonal communication, networking, and social skills; ability to connect authentically with diverse groups of people, especially across political and religious ideologies; comfort and excitement about reaching out to and building relationships with new people.
Strong writing and oral communication skills.
Strong organizational ability, including ability to juggle multiple projects, meet deadlines, work hard, keep things moving, and maintain attention to detail. Ability to work independently and as part of a team.
Experience with facilitation, training/leading workshops, and/or developing strategy.
Knowledge of NC political landscape is important.
Experience and comfort speaking with the media is a strong plus.
Experience creating content for various social media platforms.
Strategic thinker; flexible and tenacious; creative and entrepreneurial.
Passion and commitment to repealing the death penalty, criminal just reform, and racial justice.

Salary $50-75,000, depending on experience, with generous benefits package.

Applicants should send a cover letter by January 31, 2021, detailing interest, as well as a resume and the names of two professional references to Ms. Barrie Wallace at barrie@cdpl.org. For additional information, please contact Barrie Wallace at barrie@cdpl.org.

In 2020, the North Carolina death penalty’s racist origins came into sharp focus

December 16, 2020 By Kristin Collins

For Immediate Release: December 15, 2020
For More Information Contact: Gretchen Engel, CDPL – gretchen@cdpl.org 919-682-3983

Durham — As 2020 ends, the North Carolina death penalty occupies a precarious position in a state coming to terms with systemic racism and sweeping injustice in its criminal punishment system.

There were no new death sentences in 2020, which marks three of the past four years with no death verdicts. Even as federal executions resumed at a stunning pace, North Carolina passed its fourteenth year without an execution. Meanwhile, dozens of the state’s 138 death row prisoners are poised to bring forward claims of racism in their trials and sentences under the Racial Justice Act.

Also, on Monday, Governor Cooper’s Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice released a report acknowledging that the death penalty has a close “relationship to white supremacy” and lynching. The task force recommended a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that would, among other things, study racial disparities in death sentencing, review commutations of death sentences imposed before 2001, and consider replacing the death penalty with a maximum sentence of life without parole. The task force also recommended that the death penalty be prohibited for people with serious mental illness and those under 21, and said juvenile offenses should no longer be used as aggravating factors in death penalty trials.

“Any honest attempt at truth and reconciliation must begin with the acknowledgment that the modern death penalty is rooted in racism,” said CDPL Executive Director Gretchen M. Engel. “North Carolina’s death penalty was used first as a tool for enforcing slavery and then to police segregation. It’s no wonder that today we have a death penalty riddled with inequity. From the disproportionate numbers of people of color on death row to the death sentencing of innocent Black men, from the exclusion of African-American jurors to the favoring of white victims. If we want to move forward as a society, we must reckon with that.”

In October, CDPL released Racist Roots: Origins of North Carolina’s Death Penalty, a sweeping project that puts the modern death penalty in the context of its history. Dozens of scholars, artists, advocates, and people directly affected by the death penalty contributed to the project, which reveals how racism has shaped and perpetuated the modern death penalty.

Also this year, the N.C. Supreme Court recognized in a series of rulings that race discrimination is a serious and ongoing problem in death row cases.

The court ruled in June that all death-sentenced people who had filed claims under the N.C. Racial Justice Act are entitled to hearings where they can present evidence that prosecutors excluded African-American citizens from their juries and that racism tainted their trials. In two subsequent decisions, the court ruled that four people who had already proven discrimination under the Racial Justice Act had to be removed from death row and resentenced to life without parole, ensuring that death sentences infected by racism will never be carried out. One of those decisions noted North Carolina’s “egregious legacy of the racially discriminatory application” of the death penalty.

“This year, our state’s highest court said very clearly that it’s time to stop ignoring racism in the death penalty,” Engel said. “It’s time to confront the clear and undeniable evidence that race still determines who is sentenced to death.”

Engel continued, “Ending the death penalty is just one small part of what’s needed to finally begin erasing the stain of racism from our criminal punishment system, but it’s an important first step. As long as the state is still trying to execute people in our names, we cannot say we are serious about rooting out the legacy of slavery and racial terror.”

If we value racial equity, we must end the death penalty

November 12, 2020 By Kristin Collins

The N.C. Task Force for Racial Equity in the Criminal Justice System was established in June in the wake of widespread protests against police brutality and racism. It was established by Gov. Cooper and is made up of 24 people from a wide range of backgrounds. The task force will recommend policy changes and reforms of North Carolina’s criminal punishment system.

On September 15, CDPL’s Executive Director Gretchen M. Engel addressed a working group of the task force. These are her remarks.

Good morning and thank you for the opportunity to speak to all of you who have donated your time to work on these important issues. My name is Gretchen Engel and I’m the executive director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham. I came to North Carolina in 1992, fresh out of law school, when Henderson Hill gave me a job in capital defense. Over the years, I had the good fortune to work with Mary Pollard as well.

One of my first death row clients was Quentin Jones. Quentin was 18 years old at the time of the robbery and murder that landed him on death row.

Seventeen years ago this August, I watched the State of N.C. execute Quentin. He was then 34 years old.

Quentin Jones

After his execution, I learned that one of the jurors in his case had been interviewed by researchers at Northeastern University in Boston, my alma mater. This is what the juror said about Quentin: He was a typical n—-r. You know, if he’d been white, I would’ve had a different attitude.

Another client of mine, Robert Bacon, was tried by an all-white jury for the murder of a white man named Glennie Clark. Robert’s codefendant, Bonnie Clark was white. Bonnie was married to Glennie Clark and she was having an affair with Robert. It was Bonnie’s idea to kill Glennie and she lured him to the site of his death.

This is what a juror told me about the sentencing deliberations in Robert’s case: Blacks commit more crime. It’s typical of Blacks to be involved in crime. He shouldn’t have been dating that white woman. He was wrong to do that. And he deserves the death penalty. Thankfully, the Governor commuted Robert’s death sentence to life.

Robert Bacon

After doing this work for nearly 30 years, and seeing countless examples like these, the racism of the death penalty is very real and very personal.

I was asked to talk about the cost of the death penalty. There are a couple of ways to think about cost. One is just to count up the money. Another is to think about what we get for the money. Dollars. Value.

We know the death penalty costs a lot of money. Dr. Phil Cook at Duke University did a study showing how much — $11 million a year. Note that Dr. Cook focused on defense costs. His estimate does not include resources the Office of the Appellate Defender and the North Carolina Supreme Court could devote to other things, the extra time spent by prosecutors in capital cases, or the costs to taxpayers for federal appeals.

So what are we getting for our money? Not a lot. North Carolina has nearly 140 people on death row. Almost 90 of them have been there for 10, 20, 30, or more years. In the past decade, we’ve sentenced only 11 people to death. Looking at the past decade, you’ll see that most years we’ve spent at least $11 million dollars to obtain one or zero death sentences. Meanwhile, our last execution was in 2006, 14 years ago.

Some would say justice is priceless. There is no price on justice. One question then is, how well does this system operate? I suggest to you that if the death penalty system were the airlines, no one would fly. We’d all be too terrified.

A national study of capital sentencing between1973-1995 looked at error rates in capital sentencing. Researchers at Columbia University analyzed nearly a quarter century of data, looked at appellate reversals for serious constitutional error. Nationally, the error rate was 68%, nearly seven out of ten. North Carolina’s error rate was 71%. Truly, the death penalty is the Ford Pinto in our criminal justice tool box.

Most disturbing is how wrong we get it. Henry McCollum spent more than 30 years on death row for a crime he did not commit. He and his brother Leon Brown were exonerated by DNA evidence in 2014. Because of Henry’s wrongful conviction, and the years it took to figure that out – thank goodness we didn’t execute him in the meantime – the family of Sabrina Buie, the 11-year-old girl who was killed, has never received justice.

Henry McCollum was one of 10 men wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death in NC. The others were Sam Poole, Christopher Spicer, Alfred Rivera, Alan Gell, Jonathon Hoffman, Glen Chapman, Levon Jones, Henry McCollum, Leon Brown, and Charles Finch.

Nothing about the death penalty apparatus operates with surgical precision. Yet it is eerily good at targeting Black people. Eight of these 10 men were Black. One was Latino. Nine of 10 were people of color. Collectively, these men spent 155 years in prison for crimes other people committed.

Innocent people are disproportionately people of color. The same is true of other vulnerable populations. Of the people on North Carolina’s death row when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional to execute people who committed their crimes as children, under the age of 18, three of four were Black. Of the people on our death row when North Carolina barred the execution of people with intellectual disabilities, 16 of 18 were people of color.

Chief Justice Beasley recently observed: In our courts, African-Americans are more harshly treated, more severely punished and more likely to be presumed guilty. The death penalty was conceived as punishment for the “worst of the worst.” Worst crimes, worst people. Most calculated and most cruel killings, committed by the most depraved.

Our “modern” death penalty was supposed to be rational, not arbitrary. Getting the death penalty was not supposed to be like being struck by lightning. And, actually, it isn’t. More often, it simply strikes people who are Black. Let’s look at marginal cases, cases that don’t seem to be the “worst of the worst.”

Consider the people on our death row even though they did not personally kill the victim. They were non-shooters, non-triggermen. Of the people who have been sentenced to death in North Carolina who were not the actual killers, four of four were people of color.

Consider the people on death row whom the jury found did not premeditate and deliberate the murder, people who were convicted only of felony murder. Seven of seven in this group are people of color.

Let me go back for a minute to what Chief Justice Beasley said about African Americans being more harshly punished. In fact, the Blacker you are, the more harshly you will be punished.

A 2006 study by Stanford University psychologist Jennifer Eberhardt showed that murderers with stereotypically “Black-looking” features are more than twice as likely to get the death penalty as lighter skinned Black defendants.

In 2001, when Robert Bacon had an execution date, I interviewed Bonnie Clark’s lawyer. The lawyer was a former prosecutor and a prominent civil lawyer when I spoke to him 13 years after Bonnie enlisted Robert in the plot to kill her husband. I asked him why he thought Bonnie got life and Robert got death. Here’s what he said: You know what I think happened? Robert Bacon is a very dark skinned black man, very dark skinned, pure Negro. She was white. The victim was white. To tell you the truth, that’s what I think happened, that’s what I think the jury thought about.

At the point he told me this, I hadn’t yet told him what the juror said about how Robert had no business running around with a white woman.

Shirley Burns had two sons. One of them is Marcus Robinson. When Marcus was 18, he killed a 17-year-old white boy. Marcus was sentenced to death. The other was Curtis Green. Curtis was murdered. Nobody went to death row for that murder.

When it comes to the death penalty, white lives matter. In 2016, FBI data showed the homicide rate for Black victims was nearly four times the national average and more than six times that of whites. Consistently, Black people make up the majority of murder victims.

But the death penalty is imposed as a punishment for killings of white people. A 2001 UNC study of homicides between 1993 and 1997 showed the odds of receiving the death penalty in NC were 3.5 times higher when the victim was white. A 2010 study by Michigan State University showed defendants charged with murder in NC from 1990 to 2009 were more than twice as likely to receive the death penalty if the victim was white.

I wish what I’ve told you today were new. But it’s not. Today the Death Penalty Information Center released its report on the history of race and the death penalty. The title of the report is Enduring Injustice: The Persistence of Racial Discrimination in the U.S. Death Penalty. Next month, my office will launch a web-based project called Racist Roots: Origins of North Carolina’s Death Penalty. What I’ve told you today is an old story. As Rev. Barber says, “The link between slavery, Jim Crow, lynching and the death penalty is as connected as the intertwined ropes of the lynchman’s noose.”

We are at a momentous time in our history. We have to ask ourselves, what do we value? The death penalty is irrevocable punishment. If we continue to tinker with it, we will execute an innocent person. How could we not?

The death penalty experiment in NC has been going on for more than 40 years. We’ve yet to come even close to eliminating the taint of race. It’s time. If we value racial equity, we cannot maintain the death penalty.

Watch CDPL’s 2020 Osborn Award Celebration

October 23, 2020 By Kristin Collins

Congratulations again to Tye Hunter, the 2020 winner of CDPL’s Osborn Award for outstanding leadership in capital defense. If you missed our virtual event on October 15, you can watch it here. Even though we couldn’t be together in person, we had a lovely time together. We know that Tye felt loved and appreciated, and all of us felt buoyed in our work to end the unjust death penalty.

Here are just a few of the comments from the chat that evening. It was amazing how we felt our community’s presence, even though we were all in our separate homes.

Listen to a radio interview about Racist Roots

October 21, 2020 By Kristin Collins

Thanks to N.C. Policy Watch for helping us get the word out about our ambitious new project, Racist Roots. They recently interviewed Kristin Collins, CDPL’s associate director of public information, about how Racist Roots came to be and what it’s all about. Please listen to this 15-minute interview to understand why this project means so much to us.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW

Thank you to CDPL’s 2020 Osborn Award Sponsors

October 7, 2020 By Kristin Collins

Our Virtual Osborn Award celebration for Tye Hunter is October 15 at 7 p.m. GO HERE to watch. Though we cannot gather in person this year, we still want to celebrate Tye’s career and our movement’s many victories this year. And we still need your support to keep up the fight for a more humane world without the death penalty.

Below are the generous people who are sponsoring this year’s event. It’s not too late to add your name to this list. Go here to donate and include Osborn Award in the notes.

CHAMPIONS ($1000)

Donald Beskind & Wendy Robineau

Burton Craige

Jay & Kay Ferguson

Jon & Becky Megerian

Ken Rose & Beth Silberman

Beth & Tom Sallenger

Faith Spencer & Mark Parts

Adam & Jane Stein

Mary Ann Tally

Buddy & Lisa Conner

Anonymous

DEFENDERS ($500)

James Exum

Glenn, Mills, Fisher & Mahoney, PA

Wanda Hunter

Law Office of Kathleen M. Joyce

Robert Mahler

Marcia H. Morey

Christine Mumma

Racial Equity Institute

Susan and David Shipman

Andrew Short & Andrea Vizoso

Jacob Sussman

Amos Tyndall

Gay Wells & Family in memory of Frank Wells

ADVOCATES ($250)

Cindy Adcock & Pat McCoy

Akin Adepoju

David Botchin

Ken & Margie Broun

Buzzard Law Firm

Judy & Winston Charles

Andrew DeSimone

Cait Fenhagen & John Carlson

Karen Demby

Fred & Alana Friedman

Terrica Redfield Ganzy

Shirley Geissinger

Dionne Gonder-Stanley

Elaine M. Gordon & Robert M. Hurley

Sandra Hagood

Pricey Harrison

Henderson & Renee Hill

Linda Hudgins

Staples & Tamsie Hughes

Mark Kleinschmidt

Hunter Labovitz

Douglas Legg & Nina Goldman

Pascale & Nathaniel Mackey

David Mills

Janet Moore & Neil Tollas

Pat & Polly Morgan

Robert Mosteller & Elizabeth Gibson

North Carolina Justice Center

Kristin Parks

W. James Payne Law Firm

Rich Rosen & Becky Slifken

Steve Schewel & Lao Rubert

Helen & Fred Spielman

Mark Towler

Jenny Warburg

Gregory Weeks

James E. Williams Jr.

Gordon Worley

Julian Wright

SUPPORTERS & FRIENDS

Catherine Grosso & Stephen Gasteyer

Gaylen Brubaker

Jack & Jennifer Boger

Eugene & Signe Brown

Danielle Carman & Jeff Conners

Linda DeJongh

Hon. Patricia Devine

Richard Dieter

Mark Edwards

Betsy Fenhagen

Janet Flowers

Glenn Gerding

Alyson Grine & Karen Stegman

Meg & Allen Hart

Henry Lister

Ann Mack

Noel Nickle

Marilyn Ozer

Mark Rabil

Kara Richards

Cas Shearin & DeVon Tolson

Susan J. Weigand

Humza Hussain

Deborah & Steve MacDonald

Deborah Miller

Marshall Dayan

Susan E. Brooks

John Forbush

Jean Parks

Vincent Rabil

Rachel Ruderman

Ben Serrurier

Robert E. Seymour, Jr.

Robert & Jessica Singagliese

Nelson & Libby Smith

Eugenia Upchurch

Kimberly Stevens

Jenny & Terry Alford

Etta Blankenship

Emily Baxter

Jonathan & Joal Broun

Kelley Hunter & Joe Hunt

Susannah Hunter

Johanna Jennings

Mollie Lee

Anna Richards & LeRoi Brashears

Cassandra Stubbs

Brian Stull & Sejal Zota

Kimberly Talikoff

Robert Trenkle

Beth Winston

Jan Dodds

Bob and Kim Fuller

Marian Jensen

Sara Switek

Linda Weisel and Daniel Pollitt

Marilyn Worth

Penelope Maunsell Nye

New project finds a modern death penalty deeply entangled with N.C.’s history of racism

October 5, 2020 By Kristin Collins

For More Information Contact:
Gretchen Engel, CDPL Executive Director – gretchen@cdpl.org 919-682-3983
Henderson Hill, ACLU Capital Punishment Project Senior Counsel – HHill@aclu.org 704-502-1145

Durham, NC — On Monday, the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, in collaboration with scholars, advocates, artists, historians, poets, and people directly affected by the death penalty, launched a new online project, Racist Roots: Origins of North Carolina’s Death Penalty.

The project includes essays, poetry, artwork, commentary, and historical documents that place the state’s death penalty in the context of 400 years of history and expose its deep entanglement with slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, and modern systemic racism. The death penalty, the project contends, is another Confederate monument that North Carolina must tear down. [Read the essay that sums up this project.]

“The death penalty began as a way to enforce a racist social order, and as it evolved through the generations, our state never addressed the original sin that lay at its root,” said CDPL Executive Director Gretchen Engel. “Today, the death penalty is the apex of a racist criminal punishment system that cages hundreds of thousands of people and declares human lives, particularly those of Black people, expendable. The clear message of this project is: Any meaningful conversation about race and criminal justice in North Carolina must include the death penalty.”

Engel continued, “In light of all that this project reveals, we call on the North Carolina Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice to undertake serious study of the North Carolina death penalty and recommend its repeal.”

Racist Roots shows that in every incarnation, from slavery to post-Civil War Reconstruction, to Jim Crow, and to the modern criminal punishment system, those wielding the death penalty have imposed it disproportionately on Black people; valued the lives of white victims above all others; and excluded citizens of color from power by systematically excluding them from capital juries. So, while the precise influence of racism in the death penalty has changed from era to era, its essential nature has not.

Today, people of color make up less than 30 percent of North Carolina’s population but 60 percent of its death row. Black defendants are far more likely to be wrongly convicted; eight out of ten of North Carolina’s death row exonerees are Black and a ninth is Latino. Nearly half of the people on death row had an all-white jury or a jury with only a single person of color. Qualified Black jurors are two and a half times more likely than whites to be struck from capital juries. Defendants are twice as likely to be sentenced to death if they’re accused of killing a white person, rather than a person of color.

The project details the cases of some of North Carolina’s nearly 140 current death row prisoners to expose racism’s continuing influence. For example, Andrew Ramseur was sentenced to death in 2010 amid a racist public outcry comparing him to a “monkey” and demanding he be hung “from the nearest traffic light as a warning to the rest.” Rather than condemning bigotry, the district attorney promised — and successfully sought — a quick death sentence.

“It’s stunning to read these case studies. Proof positive that the modern death penalty continues the shameful legacy of racialized violence by the state,” said Henderson Hill, Senior Counsel at the ACLU Capital Punishment Project and member of the N.C. Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice. “We see Black and Latino men quickly condemned by all-white juries organized by prosecutors too often willing to use racist tropes to recall the jury’s traditional duty to protect the white citizenry. In several cases, jurors openly admitted their bigotry and their desire for the lynchings of Black men.”

Hill wrote the introduction to the project, in which he says: “As we begin a long-overdue conversation about the future of police and prisons, we must confront the punishment that sits at the top of that system, condoning all its other cruelties — the death penalty.”

The project also includes an original poem by nationally-lauded poet and writer Clint Smith and artwork by Durham artist Kimberley Pierce Cartwright. Other contributors include:

Author and historian Tim Tyson writes: “White skin has always been a badge of authority to destroy Black bodies. In North Carolina, white people have exerted that authority not just through police brutality, but through mob violence, lynching, and the death penalty.”

UNC historian Seth Kotch, whose book Lethal State details the history of the N.C. death penalty, says the death penalty and lynching were not opposing forces, but two ways of achieving the same aim. “The reality of history is that both answered the same demands and reacted to the same fears.”

African American death row prisoner Paul Brown writes about the experience of being sentenced to death by an all-white jury. “I saw [the prosecutor’s] shoulders relax as each prospective juror of color left the courtroom.”

Emancipate NC Executive Director Dawn Blagrove writes that Black women have always been the heart of movements for racial justice, including the fight to end the death penalty. “Harriet Tubman led us to freedom. Ida B. Wells exposed the barbarism of lynching. Fannie Lou Hamer led us to political power. Not because of esoteric principle or moral dilemma, but out of necessity.”

Andre Smith, whose son was murdered in Raleigh, says the death penalty is another way that society throws away Black lives. He calls for compassion and mentoring for those who have committed crimes. “This is how we change the world. Not by taking someone’s life.”

Miriam Krinsky and Liz Komar, two former prosecutors, now in leadership roles at Fair and Just Prosecution, write that their pursuit of a more racially just criminal system must leave the death penalty behind. “We both became prosecutors out of a deep desire to do justice and make our communities safer — and we’ve concluded that the death penalty is incompatible with both.”

Sherrilyn Ifill and Jin Hee Lee, of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, one of the nation’s premier civil rights law firms, speak to the ways in which North Carolina could become a national leader in addressing racism in its courts. Based on recent N.C. Supreme Court decisions on the Racial Justice Act, they say, “this southern state might serve as an example for the rest of the nation to follow.”

Racist Roots is the result of more than a year of research, writing, and collaboration. It relies on scholarly writings, as well as historical documents and newspaper accounts, and CDPL’s deep knowledge of North Carolina death penalty cases.

“When we started this project, we knew that the death penalty was racist. We’ve seen how it produces disparate outcomes, how it’s used to threaten vulnerable people into confessing to crimes, how it’s carried out in courtrooms where every person wielding power is white,” Engel said.

“But we didn’t realize until we undertook deep research just how closely tied the modern death penalty is to our state’s history of violent white supremacy. The death penalty is a tool of the lynch mob and, no matter how much tinkering we do, it cannot be fixed. The only solution is to end it.”

N.C. Supreme Court once again recognizes pervasive evidence of racism in North Carolina’s death penalty

September 25, 2020 By Kristin Collins

September 25, 2020

For More Information Contact:
David Weiss, CDPL Senior Staff Attorney, 919-593-7790, dcweiss@cdpl.org

Raleigh, NC — Three death row prisoners were resentenced to life without parole Friday after the N.C. Supreme Court ruled that they had been unconstitutionally returned to death row after receiving life sentences under the state’s Racial Justice Act.

Christina Walters, Quintel Augustine, and Tilmon Golphin will be removed from death row because they proved that race was a significant factor in their sentences. The decisions in their cases are based on the state constitution and cannot be appealed.

Friday’s decisions marked the final rulings in a series by the state Supreme Court, which affirmed that rights granted under the 2009 Racial Justice Act had been wrongly taken away from death-sentenced people who have brought forward evidence of racial discrimination in their trials and sentences.

“We are grateful to the court for upholding the law that says a person cannot be sentenced to death twice for the same crime,” said CDPL Senior Staff Attorney David Weiss. “Our clients proved that race was a major factor in their death sentences. Their evidence has never been disputed, and they never should have been sent back to death row.”

The North Carolina legislature passed the Racial Justice Act in 2009. It led to a statewide study showing that, in capital trials, prosecutors dismissed Black citizens at 2.5 times the rate they excluded whites. This disparity was driven entirely by race and could not be attributed to any other factor, such as death penalty views. It also found that crimes with white victims were twice as likely to be punished with death.

Walters, Augustine, and Golphin — along with Marcus Robinson, who was resentenced to life in August — were the only four death row prisoners to have Racial Justice Act hearings before the law was repealed in 2013. All four won their cases, using the study to show a pattern of race discrimination in North Carolina capital cases. The defendants also unearthed prosecutors’ notes referring to jurors with denigrating terms like “blk wino,” and training materials showing that their prosecutors had been instructed on how to invent “race-neutral” reasons to justify their strikes of Black jurors.

In 2012, Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Gregory Weeks resentenced all four to life without parole after finding a “wealth of evidence” that systemic exclusion of Black jurors had tainted their death sentences. However, after the repeal of the Racial Justice Act, the N.C. Supreme Court overturned Weeks’ ruling on procedural grounds, saying the hearings should have been held separately rather than jointly and that prosecutors should have had more time to prepare their case, even though the trial court had already given the state two continuances. The court ordered new RJA hearings for the four defendants, and in a legally questionable move, the N.C. Department of Public Safety quickly returned them to death row.

Now, the Supreme Court has ruled that the reinstatement of their death sentences was unconstitutional and has restored life sentences for all four.

In a separate ruling in June, the court also said that all North Carolina death row prisoners who filed RJA claims before the law’s 2013 repeal are entitled to hearings where they can present evidence that prosecutors purposefully excluded African American citizens from their juries and that racism tainted their trials. The courts have not yet decided how those cases will proceed.

“The court has again affirmed what we already knew,” Weiss said. “The Racial Justice Act was a necessary law that revealed an epidemic of racism in death penalty cases. We cannot sweep that evidence under the rug. And we certainly cannot execute people who’ve proven that racism played a part in their sentences.”

Tye Hunter wins CDPL’s 2020 J. Kirk Osborn Award

September 21, 2020 By Kristin Collins

WATCH THE AWARD PRESENTATION ON YOUTUBE (Thursday, October 15 at 7 p.m.)

SEE OUR SPONSORS

CDPL is proud to announce that Malcolm “Tye” Hunter is the winner of this year’s J. Kirk Osborn Award for outstanding leadership in capital defense. This year’s ceremony honoring Tye will be at 7 p.m. on Thursday, October 15. The event is online. Simply go to cdpl.org and follow the link on our homepage to join us in celebrating Tye’s good work.

Though we can’t be together in person, we’ve done our best to make this an engaging event that reminds our community of the power and importance of capital defense work. There will be an appearance by a nationally known capital defense leader, as well as a moving musical performance. You don’t have to register, but we hope you will donate to CDPL’s work.

Suggested donation levels are:

Champion: $1,000
Defender: $500
Advocate: $250
Supporter: $75

We welcome donations of any amount, either in advance or during the event.

DONATE NOW

Tye Hunter: A career fighting the death penalty

Tye and his co-counsel outside the U.S. Supreme Court after arguing McKoy v. North Carolina.

Tye has devoted four decades to advancing indigent defense and fighting the death penalty. Tye worked as an assistant public defender in Fayetteville and then came to the Appellate Defender’s Office. He was the second director of OAD and while serving in that leadership role, he represented dozens of capital cases, winning new trials and new sentencing hearings for many. Tye appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court in McKoy v. North Carolina. Tye’s victory in this single case resulted in relief for nearly 50 men and women who had received unconstitutional death sentences.

Tye was the first director of the N.C. Office of Indigent Defense Services and created the infrastructure that ensured qualified counsel, supported capital defense teams, and, not surprisingly, saw a dramatic drop in the number of death sentences returned in our state.

Tye next served as CDPL’s executive director from 2009 to 2013. He shepherded the office during the early years of the Racial Justice Act litigation. Tye was personally part of the RJA team that won relief for Marcus Robinson and three other Cumberland County capital defendants following two evidentiary hearings under the RJA. During those hearings, Tye’s fierce advocacy and famous wit were on full display and contributed greatly to these enormous victories.

Tye continued to represent death-sentenced clients after leaving CDPL, including Rayford Burke, another RJA client. Tye’s oral argument in the N.C. Supreme Court was a model of appellate advocacy and this past June, the court granted relief to Mr. Burke.

Tye being arrested at the N.C. legislature during Moral Monday protests.

The J. Kirk Osborn Award

J. Kirk Osborn

J. Kirk Osborn was one of the giants of the capital defense community. Kirk defended more than a dozen capital cases and never had a client sentenced to death. His advocacy and deep compassion for his clients saved many lives, and inspired other attorneys to follow in his footsteps. Each year, the Center for Death Penalty Litigation honors Kirk’s legacy by presenting the J. Kirk Osborn Award for lifelong zealous advocacy, compassion for indigent men and women facing the death penalty, and leadership among capital defense attorneys.

N.C. Supreme Court decision says Racial Justice Act is key to ending death penalty racism

August 14, 2020 By Kristin Collins

August 14, 2020

For More Information Contact:
Gretchen Engel, CDPL Executive Director – gretchen@cdpl.org 919-682-3983
Henderson Hill, ACLU Capital Punishment Project Attorney – HHill@aclu.org 704-502-1145

Raleigh, NC — On Friday, the North Carolina Supreme Court issued a historic call for the state to address and rise above its history of excluding Black citizens from jury service and allowing racial bias to seep into the prosecution of capital cases. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Cheri Beasley wrote, “equal protection to all must be given—not merely promised” and pointed to an “egregious legacy of the racially discriminatory application” of the death penalty.

The 4-3 ruling came in the case of Marcus Robinson, the first death row prisoner to be resentenced to life without parole under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act. The court found that Robinson had been unconstitutionally returned to death row, despite unrefuted proof that Black jurors were intentionally denied the right to serve on his jury. The court ruled that Robinson cannot be executed, but may serve a life sentence instead, because of the “overwhelming evidence” of racial bias presented in his case.

“Robinson’s claims under the RJA do not negate or diminish his guilt or the impact of his crimes on the victim’s family, the victim’s friends, and the community,” Chief Justice Cheri Beasley wrote. “Rather, the Act ensured that even those who commit the most serious offenses are entitled to a trial and sentencing free from racial discrimination.”

Read the full decision here.

“This is one of the most important decisions I’ve ever seen from our state Supreme Court,” said CDPL Executive Director Gretchen Engel. “It seems that Justice Beasley and her colleagues intend to make good on the promise that no person should be executed if race was a factor in their death sentence. This is a critical issue of racial justice, both for people on death row and for African Americans seeking to participate in our democracy. It’s heartening to see the court recognizing that fact, in all its difficulty and complexity, and taking bold action.”

The decision marked the second time in three months that the state Supreme Court forcefully rejected a legislative effort to void the Racial Justice Act and bury the evidence of racially-biased death sentences that the law revealed. In June, the court ruled that all death row prisoners who filed claims under the Racial Justice Act are entitled to hearings, even though the law was repealed in 2013.

Friday’s decision, in addition to finding clear evidence of discrimination against African American jurors in Robinson’s case, recognized the connection between modern jury selection practices and the centuries-long history of racism in America. It chronicled “the many ways African Americans have struggled to participate in our democratic processes,” beginning with post-Civil War laws explicitly barring Black people from jury service and then morphing into Jim Crow-era poll taxes and literacy tests. It described the modern peremptory strike as the newest tactic used to remove qualified Black citizens from juries.

The court made a strong case for the Racial Justice Act’s necessity, saying it was passed in response to the failure of North Carolina courts to enforce federal standards barring racially motivated jury strikes. “The goal of this historic legislation was simple: to abolish racial discrimination from capital sentencing. That is, to ensure that no person in this state is put to death because of the color of their skin,” Beasley wrote.

Robinson, along with Quintel Augustine, Tilmon Golphin, and Christina Walters, were the only four death row prisoners to have Racial Justice Act hearings before the law was repealed in 2013. All four defendants won their cases, using the study to show a pattern of discrimination that denied them the right to a jury of their peers. In addition to the study, the defendants unearthed prosecutors’ notes referring to jurors with denigrating terms like “blk wino,” and training materials showing that their prosecutors had been instructed on how to invent “race-neutral” reasons to justify their strikes of Black jurors.

In 2012, Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Gregory A. Weeks resentenced all four to life without parole after finding a “wealth of evidence” that systemic exclusion of Black jurors had tainted their death sentences. Friday’s decision recognized that Weeks’ findings were “meticulously detailed.” However, over the next few years, though their evidence of racial bias was never disproven, they were again placed at risk of execution.

After the repeal of the Racial Justice Act, the N.C. Supreme Court overturned Weeks’ ruling on procedural grounds, saying the hearings should have been held separately rather than jointly and that prosecutors should have had more time to prepare their case, even though the trial court had already given the state two continuances. The court ordered new RJA hearings for the four defendants, and in a legally questionable move, the N.C. Department of Public Safety quickly returned them to death row.

Then, when they requested the hearings the Supreme Court had ordered, a Superior Court judge refused to hold them, saying that the defendants were no longer entitled to hearings because the law had been repealed. All four appealed to the state Supreme Court, but the court has not yet decided the cases of Augustine, Golphin and Walters.

“Our clients ended up in the ultimate Catch-22,” Engel said. “They had clear proof of racism that they presented under a valid law. Then, the state Supreme Court asked them to present the evidence again. When they tried to do that, the state said, ‘Sorry, too late. The law no longer exists.’ Today, this Supreme Court, under the strong leadership of Chief Justice Beasley, said that North Carolina must stop playing games with justice and start looking at the big picture, which clearly shows that our death penalty is racist.”

Advocates said they believe the evidence of racial bias in capital prosecutions, uncovered as a result of the Racial Justice Act, raises serious questions about the legitimacy of North Carolina’s death penalty.

“It’s unthinkable that we could amass a mountain of evidence showing that race plays a role in the North Carolina death penalty and then just ignore it and return to executing people,” said Henderson Hill, an ACLU attorney who is part of the Racial Justice Act litigation. “Today, the high court declared that it’s unacceptable for North Carolina to keep its head in the sand, and we are grateful. It is time for everyone in North Carolina to ask themselves, after decades of racially-biased prosecutions, whether the state should still have the right to carry out executions.”