On Sept. 26, we celebrated the achievements of Etta Blankenship and Bob Trenkle, two stars of the North Carolina capital defense community. Thanks to photographer Emily Baxter for capturing a beautiful evening that reminded us why we do this work.
CDPL founder Henderson Hill joins Curtis Flowers defense team
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
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.
Bob Trenkle & Etta Blankenship win 2019 Osborn Award
CDPL has always known that it takes a team to win a death penalty case. Often, an attorney’s most trusted teammate is the mitigation investigator. Together, they undertake some of the most grueling and emotional work of a capital case: tracking down family members, investigating crime facts, sorting through a lifetime’s worth of records and documents, in addition to spending many hours with the client. Often, the results of that collaboration make the difference between life and death for our clients. That’s why this year, CDPL’s award for outstanding work in death penalty cases goes to a team: Bob Trenkle, an attorney who has spent three decades defending capital clients, and Etta Blankenship, the private investigator, who also does mitigation work, who has worked beside Bob on many of his death penalty cases.
“Bob and Etta exemplify what we mean when we say team defense,” said CDPL Executive Director Gretchen M. Engel. “They have shown us over decades what it means to care about clients and to devote yourself to saving people’s lives.”
Bob and Etta began working together in 1991, when both worked for the Orange County Public Defender’s Office. Bob has now represented more than 100 capital clients, and taken eight cases to capital trial, as well as representing several capital clients in post-conviction proceedings. Etta has been his first pick as an investigator on every one of his cases. In 2001, the two worked together to shape North Carolina’s first Capital Defender’s Office. They helped set the capital defense standards that have made death penalty verdicts rare in North Carolina. Both have also devoted untold hours to mentoring other capital defense teams throughout the state.
Bob has worked as a public defender in both Florida and North Carolina. He also taught law at the University of Florida Law School. He has been with the firm of Edwards & Trenkle since 2002. He is a Board Certified lawyer in both federal and state criminal law. He has lectured and taught attorneys on defending capital murder charges in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas, most recently in April. Bob has volunteered as an instructor at numerous training seminars on capital defense, and defense attorneys across the state say he is always willing to take their call and offer as much of his time as they need.
Etta was licensed as a private investigator in 2003. At that time, she began traveling the state doing fact and mitigation investigations in capital cases. Etta is known for her caring touch with clients and building the trust required to help them make good decisions about their defense. In 2017, in addition to dealing with her own cases, she flew to be with a friend whose brother was facing execution in Arkansas. Etta went to the prison with her friend while she had her final visit with her brother and was also at the prison with her friend during the execution of her brother. Afterwards, Etta wrote this moving piece about that experience.
Bob and Etta never rest on their victories. As soon as they win one case, they move on to saving the next life. We hope that, at our award reception in September, they will finally take a moment to celebrate their many accomplishments. BUY YOUR TICKETS HERE.
The J. Kirk Osborn Award
J. Kirk Osborn
It has now been more than a decade since we lost J. Kirk Osborn, 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.
CDPL Statement on the Death Sentence of Seaga Gillard in Wake County
From Gretchen M. Engel, Executive Director of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation:
Today’s verdict in Wake County does not reflect the views of the majority of citizens in North Carolina. All it shows is that, if you try ten death penalty cases in a row and exclude from the jury all the people who oppose the death penalty, you can find a jury that will sentence a person to death despite the death penalty’s documented unfairness.
By law, juries in capital trials include only people who support the death penalty, which polls tell us are now a minority in North Carolina. However, even with juries stacked in favor of the death penalty, only two of the past seventeen capital trials in North Carolina have ended with death sentences. In Wake County the ratio is even lower. This is the only death verdict of the past ten capital trials.
Seaga Gillard committed a serious crime for which he should be punished. But was he the worst of the worst? Wake County jurors have rejected the death penalty in cases of rape and murder, including rape and murder of a child. Wake County jurors have refused to impose the death penalty in other double homicide cases and even in a case in which the defendant was convicted of murdering five people. All today’s verdict shows is what we already knew: That the death penalty is imposed arbitrarily, and disproportionately on black men.
Since taking over as Wake district attorney, Lorrin Freeman has pursued the death penalty more than any other prosecutor in North Carolina, costing taxpayers millions of dollars. That is a poor investment, even in this case. Executions have been on hold since 2006 and most death row prisoners in North Carolina have been awaiting execution for more than 20 years. Gillard will now join them, awaiting an execution that is unlikely to ever be carried out.
CDPL wins justice for a client who spent 19 years on death row
On Nov. 9, CDPL client James Morgan was removed from death row after his attorneys argued that Morgan never got the fair trial to which the Constitution entitles him. The jury that sentenced Morgan to death 19 years ago wasn’t told about his his severe and lifelong brain damage from three separate traumatic brain injuries, beginning in childhood. This is exactly the type of evidence that typically persuades juries to choose life instead of death. With the approval of Buncombe District Attorney Todd Williams, Morgan will now serve life without parole. Read more from one of his attorneys, Elizabeth Hambourger.
CDPL honors 2018 Osborn Award winners
On October 11, CDPL honored two of our community’s most outstanding capital defense attorneys, law partners Frank Wells and Jon Megerian. [Go here to read more about their exceptional careers.] Despite a hurricane and a power outage, we managed to have a powerful night celebrating their many accomplishments.
Thanks to photographer Les Todd for volunteering his time to document the evening.
Listen to the moving story of a capital defense attorney
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.
Jurors sent an innocent man to death row; now they ask: “Where did we go wrong?”
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”
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”
