The Center for Death Penalty Litigation

Steve Freedman wins CDPL’s 2021 Osborn Award

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Steve Freedman

Steve Freedman

CDPL is happy to announce that Steve Freedman is the winner of the 2021 J. Kirk Osborn Award for outstanding leadership in capital defense. Because of the steep rise in Covid cases, we have made the difficult decision to postpone the ceremony honoring Steve until the spring in hopes that we can gather in person. Stay tuned for a new date. Everyone who has purchased tickets and kindly donated to CDPL will be automatically signed up for our spring event. If you have not yet made a gift in Steve’s honor, you may continue to register for the event here. [Please note that the date listed on the registration page is only a placeholder. You will be notified when the new event date is set.]

Steve recently retired from the N.C. Office of the Capital Defender. All told, he spent 30 years as a public defender and worked several years as a staff attorney at CDPL. Steve has taken on the most difficult capital cases and persuaded juries to spare his clients’ lives. To cite just one example, in 2007, Steve represented Sam Cooper, who was accused in a Wake County crime spree that left five people dead. After a month-long trial in which Steve and his team presented compelling evidence of post-traumatic stress disorder that resulted from horrendous childhood abuse, the jury voted for five life sentences instead of death. And Steve’s career is far from over. Despite his retirement, he recently agreed to take a Richmond County capital case, and he continues to assist on the case of a former client charged with killing four prison guards in Pasquotank County.

To understand why we chose Steve for this honor, read this nomination letter from fellow capital defender Robert Singagliese:

The epitome of leading by example

Over the course of his career, Steve has done more for poor people charged with capital murder than most any attorney in the state.

Steve has been an excellent advocate at the trial level for his entire career for poor people charged with serious felonies. He has been a public defender in Columbus, OH; Cumberland County, NC; Orange County, NC; and the Eastern District of NC in the federal system. He also spent a number of years at CDPL. Finally, he has spent about 15 years at the Office of the Capital Defender in Durham, where we worked together. He has tried eight capital trials, only one of which resulted in a death sentence. While not a very vocal member of the bar, I believe Steve is the epitome of leading by example.

In my four and a half years at OCD, I have had the incredible opportunity to work with Steve on three capital cases. (We also tried a non-capital case together that thrillingly resulted in an acquittal.) His care for his clients is obvious. In his earliest meetings with his clients, he lets them know that our job is going to be to learn everything we can about them, so that by the time a case has reached its conclusion we know more about our clients than they do. That is a fine explanation of mitigation work. That introduction also lets our clients know from the beginning that the case is not about the lawyers, and it’s not about the crime. Our work is about them.

The last of the three capital cases I mentioned ended just recently. In that case, our client cared less about his life than we did. (Indeed, he told the judge at his sentencing hearing that he was dissatisfied with his lawyers because we delayed the case and prevented him from getting the death penalty.) While capital trial work is always demanding and frustrating, it was even harder with a client who refused to cooperate with his defense team. Yet, Steve didn’t give up, and with some creative litigation and a lot of patience, we were able to maneuver the case into a posture that allowed it to be resolved without a capital trial.

As for teamwork, it’s obvious that Steve is the “first chair” in essentially any setting in which he finds himself. Yet he doesn’t make the other members of his team feel that way. He encourages participation from fellow attorneys, investigators, and experts. I’ve also seen him switch his own gears and focus based on the input of others, a sign that he’s not just being polite about a team approach. He sincerely appreciates that every member of the team has something to contribute.

I have also watched Steve work with several junior members of the capital defense community, including myself. I owe much of what I have learned since joining this office to Steve. I have no doubt that other lawyers have had a similar experience.

Finally, a short anecdote. Two years ago, Steve tried a non-capital murder case in Durham. The State never made a plea offer, and the facts were not good for Steve’s client. Steve’s defense brought forward evidence of legitimate mental health issues, including intellectual disability, Bipolar disorder, and intoxication. Before sitting down at the end of his closing argument, knowing that the State would have last argument, Steve choked up a bit and asked the members of the jury for someone to be his client’s advocate in the jury room. He asked for someone to stand up for D’Marlo, because Steve wasn’t going to be allowed to stand up again. It was clear how much Steve cared about his client. What more could a client ask for?

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.

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

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 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 before his execution

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 clemency poster

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

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.

 

Racist Roots finds a modern death penalty deeply entangled with North Carolina’s history of racism

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Racist Roots

In October 2020, the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, in collaboration with scholars, advocates, artists, historians, poets, and people directly affected by the death penalty, launched 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,” CDPL Executive Director Gretchen Engel said. “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.”

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.

For essays, photography, video and more, go to RACISTROOTS.ORG

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

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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 

T

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.”

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

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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.

As we grieve the victims of racist violence, we want you to know where we stand

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A message from CDPL Executive Director Gretchen M. Engel:

When I came to North Carolina in 1992 to work against the death penalty, my first client was an African American man who’d been convicted of killing a white state trooper. My next client was an African American man whose white girlfriend persuaded him to kill her estranged white husband. An all-white jury sentenced him to death; the girlfriend got life. In 1999, my Black client Harvey Green was executed for killing two white people during a robbery. In fact, if you’d looked at my client list over the years, you’d think most of the violence in this country has been carried out by poor Black people — and that most of the victims were white.

However, in fighting against the death penalty, we at CDPL have necessarily steeped ourselves in the history of racial oppression in America. We understand the torturous journey from slavery to lynching and racial terror, to Jim Crow and the modern death penalty. Because we’ve studied this history, we know that much of the violence in our country has been carried out not by the people on death row, but by white people, some of them carrying badges or sitting in the highest positions of power, seeking to maintain the social order. And most of the people murdered in this country have never gotten justice.

This is what the Halifax County Courthouse looked like less than 50 years before my first client’s trial there:

This history is not distant.

Today, we see the legacy of racist violence in the death penalty, and also in the public executions of George Floyd and Armaud Arbery. In the killings of Philando Castile, Keith Scott, Eric Garner, Danquirs Franklin, and so many others. Too many others. My heart breaks for their families, and for our country that is still so poisoned by racism.

People work at CDPL because they believe in the inherent dignity and worth of every human being. We also believe deep in our bones that Black lives matter. And I want to make a few things clear:

  • We support the overwhelmingly peaceful and necessary protests against police violence.
  • We respect the leadership of Black-led organizations like Black Lives Matter, Emancipate NC, and the NAACP. We defer to them about the best way to stand up to racism and police violence in this moment.

CDPL will continue to fight against the racist state violence of the death penalty. But we also see that the death penalty is just one tool of oppression, and that we must be in solidarity with other movements for racial justice. To all who fight racism and oppression, we stand with you.

I hope we can turn our grief and pain into real change and that the strength of the ongoing protests will move our policy makers, courts, and public agencies to face and dismantle the systemic racism that has plagued the country for 400 years. I hope for concrete and meaningful reform. CDPL looks forward to working with all of you to make that happen.

CDPL founder Henderson Hill joins Curtis Flowers defense team

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CDPL founder and former director Henderson Hill is joining the defense team of Curtis Flowers, a death-sentenced man in Mississippi whose extraordinary case rose to national prominence after a gripping podcast revealed that he is innocent.

Flowers is facing a seventh trial for the same crime. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned his case earlier this year after finding that the prosecutor had systematically excluded African American jurors at all six of Flowers’ previous trials. Now, the same district attorney appears poised to try Flowers again, even after the previous six trials either ended in hung juries or were overturned because of prosecutorial misconduct. Meanwhile, Flowers has spent 22 years in prison, most of it on death row, for a crime he didn’t commit.

“A good friend has famously observed that our criminal justice system treats you better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent,” said Hill. “The justice system’s serial abuse of Curtis Flowers — poor, black and innocent — must and will stop. I am honored to work with Rob McDuff and the Mississippi Center for Justice to achieve that to which Mr. Flowers is so deeply entitled: a full measure of justice and vindication.”

The evidence of racist jury selection in Flowers’ case is strikingly similar to evidence that CDPL helped uncover in North Carolina under the Racial Justice Act. CDPL is litigating dozens of cases in which black jurors across North Carolina were illegally denied the right to serve because of their race.

Hill has spent his career fighting against the death penalty and championing civil rights. In addition to founding CDPL, he directed the Eighth Amendment Project, a national nonprofit that works to end the death penalty. His work has helped many people avoid death sentences and execution. In 2014, he won CDPL’s J. Kirk Osborn Award for leadership in capital defense.

“Henderson Hill is known throughout the country as an excellent lawyer with considerable courtroom experience in criminal defense and capital cases,” said McDuff. “He is a tireless proponent of fairness in our justice system, and his presence will add greatly to the effort to finally obtain justice for Curtis Flowers.”

CDPL argues Racial Justice Act cases in the NC Supreme Court

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On August 26 and 27, CDPL attorneys were part of an amazing team that argued six Racial Justice Act cases before the North Carolina Supreme Court. These cases go to the heart of our work to bring to light the injustice of the death penalty. We presented clear evidence that these death sentences were poisoned by racial discrimination and cannot stand. Here are a few memories from those momentous days. Read more here about the Racial Justice Act and why it matters.

 

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