The Center for Death Penalty Litigation

Listen to the moving story of a capital defense attorney

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It’s hard to describe what it feels like to be a capital defense attorney. To be responsible for saving the lives of people who’ve committed terrible crimes, and sometimes, to be forced to watch them die. In this video, CDPL attorney Elizabeth Hambourger explains in moving and personal terms what it’s like to do this most difficult of jobs.

She performed this spoken word piece at Poetic Justice, an event organized by the Carolina Justice Policy Center, in which poets, advocates, attorneys, and others told stories of the criminal justice system. Take a few minutes to watch, and step into someone else’s world.

The more I know about the death penalty, the more problems I see with it. But what seems most pressing to me now is that the death penalty increases pain. It’s like a machine that takes this terribly painful human event, and it takes that pain and replicates it and sends it spewing out in all directions.

See more videos from Poetic Justice here.

UNEQUAL JUSTICE

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How Obsolete Laws and Unfair Trials Created North Carolina’s Outsized Death Row

The death penalty is all but extinct in North Carolina. Juries have recommended only a single new death sentence in the past four years. The state hasn’t carried out an execution since 2006. Yet, North Carolina has the sixth largest death row in the nation, with more than 140 men and women. It is a relic of another era.

More than 100 of N.C.’s death row prisoners — about three-quarters — were sentenced in the 1990s, under wildly different laws. During those years, North Carolina juries sent dozens of people a year to death row, more than Texas. The state’s courtrooms were dominated by prosecutors like Ken Honeycutt in Stanly County, who celebrated new death sentences by handing out noose lapel pins to his assistant prosecutors.

Beginning in 2001, after investigations and DNA testing began to reveal innocent people on death row, a wave of reforms transformed the landscape. New laws guaranteed capital defendants such basic rights as trained defense attorneys and the right to see all the evidence in their cases. A court mandate requiring prosecutors to seek death for virtually every first-degree murder — the only such requirement in the nation — was ended.

Today, the death penalty is seen as a tool to be used sparingly, instead of a bludgeon to be wielded in virtually every first-degree murder case. Yet, new laws and shifting public opinion have had little impact on prisoners sentenced in another era. The bulk of North Carolina’s death row is now made up of people who were tried 15, 20, even 25 years ago. They are prisoners of a state that has moved on, but has refused to reckon with its past.

Read the full report:

CDPL’s report, Unequal Justice, finds that out of 142 death row prisoners in North Carolina:

92% (131) were tried before a 2008 package of reforms intended to prevent false confessions and mistaken eyewitness identifications, which have been leading causes of wrongful convictions across the country. The new laws require interrogations and confessions to be recorded in homicide cases and set strict guidelines for eyewitness line-up procedures.

84% (119) were tried before a law granting defendants the right to see all the evidence in the prosecutor’s file — including information that might help reduce their sentence or prove their innocence.

73% (104) were sentenced before laws barring the execution of people with intellectual disabilities. Despite a promise of relief for these less culpable defendants, disabled prisoners remain on death row.

 73% (103) were sentenced before the creation of a statewide indigent defense agency that drastically improved the quality of representation for poor people facing the death penalty, and a law ending an unprecedented requirement that prosecutors pursue the death penalty in every aggravated first-degree murder. Before these changes, prosecutors did not have the ability to seek life sentences in these cases and poor people often received a sub-standard defense.

Two new articles showcase CDPL’s work to end race bias

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CDPL attorneys  have taken on a clear case of racial discrimination during the death penalty trial of our client Russell Tucker. The evidence shows that the prosecutor in Tucker’s case used a “cheat sheet” to get around a law that prohibits prosecutors from striking jurors based on race. Recently, this in depth article was published about the case.

Did Prosecutors Use a ‘Cheat Sheet’ to Strike Black Jurors in a North Carolina Death Penalty Case?

Also this month, former CDPL board member James Coleman, published a new article showing that N.C. appellate courts have been uniquely remiss in failing to protect the rights of people of color to serve on juries and thereby participate in our democracy. This article arose from the work of CDPL staff.

The Persistence of Discrimination in Jury Selection: Lessons from North Carolina and Beyond

If you need a quick explanation of the problem of race discrimination in capital jury selection, watch CDPL’s 3-minute video:

Jurors sent an innocent man to death row; now they ask: “Where did we go wrong?”

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CDPL employees spent the spring and summer criss-crossing rural North Carolina, interviewing jurors who unanimously voted to send Henry McCollum to death row. Now that McCollum has been exonerated, the jurors struggle with regret and confusion. “Some seemed relieved to finally talk through the trauma of the trial. Many were ashamed of their role, afraid of what their neighbors would think. Some feared God’s wrath, and wondered if they would go to hell for McCollum’s wrongful conviction. Some shed tears at the mention of his name and said the experience was too painful to revisit. They remembered McCollum at the defense table, silent and unresponsive, like a confused and broken child.”

Read more of Kristin Collins’ op-ed from the News & Observer.

Jurors sent an innocent man to death row. Now they ask: “Where did we go wrong?”

 

“I watched him die 15 years ago, and I still talk to him sometimes”

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CDPL’s Executive Director Gretchen Engel writes about her continuing grief for her client, Quentin Jones, who was executed 15 years ago today. “I watched him die 15 years ago, and I still talk to him sometimes. I talked to him a lot in the weeks after he was killed and thought maybe I was going a little crazy. And then I thought, it’s probably normal to go a little crazy when you see somebody killed 10 feet in front of you, somebody you knew really well and cared about and tried so hard to save. I’m talking about my client, Quentin Jones, who was executed at 2 a.m. on August 22, 2003. Quentin was 18, homeless, and addicted to drugs in 1987, when he robbed a convenience store with an Uzi 9mm pistol.”

Read the full essay here.

An execution’s aftermath: “I watched him die 15 years ago, and I still talk to him sometimes”

 

 

Jon Megerian and Frank Wells win CDPL’s 2018 Osborn Award

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Frank Wells

During more than 20 years as law partners in Asheboro, Jon Megerian and Frank Wells have demonstrated an unwavering commitment to excellence in capital defense. Their tenacity in and out of the courtroom prompted the Center for Death Penalty Litigation to make them joint recipients of this year’s J. Kirk Osborn Award. They exemplify the leadership, determination, and compassion that are Kirk’s legacy.

Jon and Frank have distinguished themselves by winning life-saving verdicts in some of the most difficult capital cases. In 2011, their client Robert Stewart faced the death penalty for a shooting rampage in a Carthage nursing home that left seven elderly patients and a nurse dead. Stewart was convicted of second-degree murder after Megerian and Wells proved to the jury that Stewart had overdosed on medications and did not even remember his actions on the day of the shooting. And at the 2006 capital trial of Keith Hall, who was accused of murdering four people in a Gaston County trailer park, Megerian and Wells frontloaded powerful mental health evidence. As a result, although Hall was convicted, jurors deadlocked at sentencing after the confounded DA contended that they should not recognize the defendant’s intellectual disability, and should rather attribute his problems to his paranoid schizophrenia. And in 2004, just 15 hours before his scheduled execution, Charles Walker received a stay. Walter ultimately won a new trial and was released from prison.

Jon Megerian

Jon and Frank have also offered invaluable help to other defense attorneys, and have always been willing to guide and empower fellow lawyers. They have served as teachers at CDPL’s Capital College and facilitated many trainings on the Wymore jury selection method, allowing other lawyers to select juries that will save their clients’ lives. With their own work, they have raised expectations for attorney performance; in their roles as teachers and mentors, they help elevate their peers to meet those standards.

Frank is a member of the NC Advocates for Justice, National Legal Aid and Defenders Association, and the National Association for Criminal Defense Lawyers, as well as a past president of the Randolph County Bar Association. He is also a member of CDPL’s board of directors. Jon is a former member of the Board of Governors for the NC Academy of Trial Lawyers, and a past Bar Councilor for the NC State Bar.

“Their brains, passion, skill, creativity, generosity, tenacity, resilience, compassion, and quick humor – gentle and reflective on Frank’s part, ferocious and sarcastic on Jon’s – make them ideal recipients of the high honor that accompanies this award,” said Janet Moore, former N.C. assistant appellate defender and now a professor of law at the University of Cincinnati. “They literally ‘raise the bar’ by providing a model towards which others can aspire.”

N.C. high court to decide landmark civil rights case on death penalty discrimination

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For Immediate Release: March 2, 2018
For More Information Contact: ACLU Capital Punishment Project E.D. Cassandra Stubbs, 919-449-4885

Raleigh, NC – Today, the N.C. Supreme Court agreed to hear cases that will decide whether four defendants of color should remain on death row despite documented evidence of racial bias in their cases. The court accepted the cases of Marcus Robinson, Quintel Augustine, Tilmon Golphin and Christina Walters – who were the first people to prove under the N.C. Racial Justice Act that racial discrimination helped secure their death sentences.

The justices will now receive briefs and hear oral arguments from both sides.  Lawyers for the four said the Supreme Court’s decision to grant review is an important step in a landmark civil rights case.

“I’ve had the honor of being involved in a number of civil rights milestones in North Carolina,” said attorney James Ferguson, a founding member, along with the late Julius Chambers, of the prominent law firm Ferguson, Chambers & Sumter. “In the 1960s, I was part of our state’s first racially-integrated law firm. We challenged school segregation and housing and employment discrimination, winning several cases in the U.S. Supreme Court. I was there in 2013 when the governor pardoned the Wilmington 10, a group of civil rights activists who were wrongly convicted in the 1970s by a racially biased prosecution. These Racial Justice Act cases are every bit as important to our state’s progress on civil rights issues.”

In 2012, after listening to weeks of testimony and sorting through documents that spanned decades, Superior Court Judge Gregory Weeks found “a wealth of evidence showing the persistent, pervasive, and distorting role of race in jury selection throughout North Carolina.” Weeks said the defendants proved that prosecutors removed African Americans from jury service at double the rate they struck other potential jurors. The defendants also exposed bias in prosecutors’ own notes, training materials and testimony. For example, a Cumberland County prosecutor wrote notes such as “blk wino,” “thug,” and “black, high drug” to describe prospective jurors in a capital case.

Under the Racial Justice Act, Weeks removed all four prisoners from death row and sentenced them to life without parole. However, in 2015, the N.C. Supreme Court overturned Weeks’ decision, saying the hearings should be done over because the state wasn’t given enough time to prepare and that three of the defendants, who were tried together, should have their own separate hearings. The defendants were sent back to death row.

Then, in January 2017, Superior Court Judge Erwin Spainhour threw out all four cases without allowing a second hearing, saying the defendants could no longer use the Racial Justice Act because the legislature repealed it in 2013.  Now, the Supreme Court will decide whether Judge Spainhour’s decision to dismiss the defendants’ powerful evidence of race discrimination was correct.

These four defendants join two other death row prisoners, Rayford Burke and Andrew Ramseur, who are already on the court’s docket with a related claim. In those cases, the court will decide whether death row prisoners who filed Racial Justice Act claims but have not yet had hearings still have the right to present evidence of racial bias in court.

“All we want is for the courts to look at the facts and make a fair decision,” said Ferguson. “When you really look at the evidence, it’s clear that race is influencing how we use the death penalty in North Carolina. This is a chance for the state’s highest court to declare, definitively, that racial bias in the death penalty is an urgent civil rights issue that cannot be swept under the rug.”

Listen: CDPL’s Gretchen Engel on the state of the N.C. death penalty

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Gretchen Engel

CDPL’s Executive Director Gretchen M. Engel was interviewed recently by the radio program A Better World, which gives an in-depth look into people and organizations “working to create a world that works for everyone.” In this wide-ranging interview, you can learn about CDPL’s work to advance the cases of death-sentenced men and women and end the death penalty.

Click here to listen to the full story.

 

 

Wake jury opts for life without parole, rejects death penalty in 9th trial in a row

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For Immediate Release: January 24, 2018
For More Information Contact: Gretchen Engel, 919-956-9545

Durham, NC — Another Wake County jury rejected the death penalty Wednesday, choosing two sentences of life without parole for Donovan Richardson at the end of a more than six-week trial. Richardson was the ninth person in a row to be tried capitally in Wake County and be sentenced to life imprisonment.

Wake has not sent anyone to death row since 2007. Yet, it has more frequent capital trials than any county in North Carolina. Wake is the only county in the state where a defendant has been tried capitally every year for the past three years.  During the same period, since the beginning of 2016, there have been only 10 capital trials – and a single death sentence – in all 100 N.C. counties.

“Our hearts go out to the families of the victims and hope they can find peace,” said Gretchen M. Engel, executive director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation. “The reality is, it just doesn’t make sense to pursue the death penalty in Wake County. Juries have made it crystal clear that they no longer want to impose death sentences, and these costly protracted trials benefit no one.”

Nationally, support for the death penalty fell to its lowest point in 45 years in 2017. Yet, even when juries reject the death penalty, it continues to be expensive. The defense cost for a death penalty case is four and a half times that of a non-capital first-degree murder case, according to Indigent Defense Services, the state agency that oversees capital defense North Carolina. That figure does not include cost incurred by local district attorney offices or the courts during lengthy capital prosecutions, which often last months compared with a week or two for non-capital trials.

Richardson’s case stretched over three months, including three weeks of jury selection, more than two weeks of evidence, and three days for the penalty phase in which the jury decides whether to recommend life or death.

Richardson was one of three people involved in the 2014 murders of Arthur Brown and David McKoy in a robbery gone wrong.  His two co-defendants both agreed to plea bargains and neither faced the death penalty. One, who admitted driving the getaway car, will serve less than two years in prison. The other, who the state conceded in Richardson’s trial killed at least one of the victims, was sentenced to life without parole. The Wake District Attorney’s Office also offered Richardson a plea of life without parole, but he declined it. The evidence was unclear as to whether Richardson or a co-defendant killed the second victim.

“Donovan Richardson wasn’t the most culpable murderer in Wake County, or even in this case. He was just the one who refused to accept the plea bargain. That’s why he ended up facing the death penalty,” Engel said. “It’s a system that makes no sense. It’s entirely arbitrary and goes against our ideas about justice and a death penalty reserved only for a carefully selected few.”

 

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The Center for Death Penalty Litigation
123 West Main Street · Suite 700 · · ·
Durham, NC 27701
919-956-9545
cdpl@cdpl.org

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