Earlier this month, Marcus Robinson was found dead in his cell at Scotland Correctional Institution. The prison ruled it a suicide. He was 49 and had spent his entire adult life, as well as a good chunk of his childhood, in prison. His death didn’t make the news. But for those who worked on Marcus’ case for decades, it was a tragic reminder of our criminal punishment system’s failure to create even a semblance of justice.

Marcus grew up with many loving relatives and a strong, supportive mother, but an abusive father inflicted trauma from a young age. Yet, a racist system treated him like an incorrigible monster rather than a child in need of healing. He ended up in juvenile prison, a cruel system reserved almost exclusively for Black children, which makes people more likely to be incarcerated as adults. 

Marcus was barely 18 years old when he played a role in a robbery that left 17-year-old Erik Tornblom dead. At his 1994 trial for Tornblom’s murder, Marcus was portrayed as a cold-blooded Black man on the hunt for a white victim. Prosecutors intentionally removed Black jurors who might have been more likely to see Marcus as human. Marcus soon became the youngest person on death row, and a new cycle of trauma began.

In 2007, Marcus was 12 hours away from execution before litigation over the state’s lethal injection protocol led to a stay. He’d already had his veins examined in preparation for the fatal injection, and already said goodbye to his family in what he thought was their final visit.

A few years later, Marcus’ case became the first to be tried under the North Carolina Racial Justice Act. In 2012, Judge Gregory Weeks ruled that prosecutors intentionally and systematically removed Black citizens from Marcus’ jury. Judge Weeks said Marcus had also proven that such discrimination was happening in capital cases across North Carolina.

It was a historic victory that brought to light decades of racism in death penalty trials, and Marcus was resentenced to life without parole. But even that victory was snatched away when the N.C. Supreme Court overturned it on a technicality and sent Marcus back to death row. Marcus and his legal team had to fight until 2020 to finally get his life sentence restored.

Attorney David Weiss remembers going to the prison to tell Marcus the news that he would never be executed: “Marcus said he was excited, grateful, thankful, and elated. He rattled off this string of adjectives. In retrospect, I wonder how happy he really was to be serving a life without parole sentence, whether he was saying that more for our benefit. Life in prison was really hard for Marcus.”

At his funeral, his mother, the Rev. Shirley Burns, sang a beautiful hymn. She had also sung it at the funerals of her two other sons. One of them was murdered in 2006 and police never solved the crime. Friends and family talked about a side of Marcus that never made the headlines. He was one of several talented singers in his family. He was loyal and protective, mischievous and funny.

We’d like to imagine a different life for Marcus, one where he wasn’t born into a racist society that too often sees Black children’s lives as disposable. One where he was shown kindness and compassion as a child, rather than imprisoned.

“Marcus was smart, witty, and sarcastic,” Weiss remembers. “He liked to cross-examine me about his case, or about a current event. He’d ask me hard questions until he felt like he caught me in a contradiction or an awkward moment. Then he’d flash that wide smile and start laughing. Not at all in a mean-spirited way. I think he enjoyed debating and questioning. Maybe in another life he’d have been a lawyer.”

Read Marcus’ obituary here. Donate to help his family with funeral expenses here.

Reposted from NCCADP.org

Henry White, center, with his family and attorneys David Weiss and Elizabeth Hambourger, moments after his release from prison

By Elizabeth Hambourger

Yesterday, my client Henry White went home to his family after 25 years in prison. It was one of the most heartwarming moments I’ve experienced as a lawyer, with all sides — including the family of Carl Marshburn, the murder victim in the case — agreeing that Mr. White should be released.

In a quarter century of incarceration, his sole disciplinary infraction was for having an unauthorized slice of cake. Even the district attorney gave his blessing to overturn Mr. White’s original sentence of life without parole, which allowed him to plead guilty to second-degree murder and be released immediately because he had already served enough time.

This rare outcome was the result of decades of work to bring to light evidence of racism in selecting Mr. White’s jury. During Mr. White’s 1997 death penalty trial, the prosecutor excluded two Black women from the jury and then admitted in open court that he removed them because of their race and gender, among other reasons…

Under the law, jurors cannot be removed on the basis of race or gender. Still, our courts at the time refused to act. The trial court allowed the jurors’ removal, and the Court of Appeals said that even though race was the “predominant” motivation for the jurors’ exclusion, it had to uphold Mr. White’s conviction because race was not the “sole reason” for their removal.

Any level of race discrimination is unacceptable, especially given our state’s history of all-white juries and racist death sentences. Prosecutors should not be able to get away with it simply by offering some token non-racial justifications. Yet, for decades North Carolina’s courts have refused to enforce the law against jury discrimination. Only recently have they begun to take on the problem.

A few years ago, my office, the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, decided to try again to convince a court to overturn Mr. White’s conviction based on the prosecutor’s admitted jury discrimination. Remarkably, the Attorney General’s office, which usually opposes these types of appeals, agreed that the claim should be heard.

When the Court of Appeals said it would take another look at the case, the Forsyth County District Attorney started to negotiate. Mr. White withdrew the jury discrimination claim, and in exchange the prosecution agreed to relief based on another problem with Mr. White’s trial: His defense attorney, who has since been disbarred, told the jury Mr. White was guilty without Mr. White’s consent. Mr. White has always maintained that he did not shoot Mr. Marshburn, but he admits he was involved in the crime.

Yesterday, as I watched the families of Mr. White and Mr. Marshburn embrace with relief, I was reminded that this case could have ended very differently. Back in 1997, prosecutors sought the death penalty for Mr. White. Thankfully, the jury chose life; otherwise he may not have lived to see this day.

Many other people were executed without ever getting a chance to prove that Black citizens were wrongfully excluded from their juries. It’s clear now that race discrimination on juries is a widespread problem, and many executions were based on unfair trials.

In those cases, the errors can never be corrected. And no one will ever get to experience the kind of redemption and healing I witnessed in a courtroom this week.