CDPL is marking an important anniversary: A decade without an execution. On Aug. 18, 2006, Samuel Flippen was the last person to be executed at Central Prison. At the time, North Carolina had one of the most active death chambers in the nation. Since that day, we have become the only Southern state to end executions. However, we can never take for granted that this respite will continue. CDPL works every day to make sure North Carolina’s death chamber remains empty. Read more on NCDealthPenalty.org about why it’s time to end the death penalty for good.
Darryl Hunt, exoneree and champion of justice, dies
CDPL board member Darryl Hunt, a tireless advocate for ending the death penalty and helping the wrongly convicted, has died.
In 1985, at just 19 years old, Darryl was wrongfully convicted of the murder of Deborah Sykes, a 25-year-old newspaper copy editor who was raped and stabbed 16 times while on her way to work in Winston-Salem. He was nearly sentenced to death, but a single juror refused to vote for his execution. Darryl spent 19 years in prison before he was finally released in 2004.
Although DNA results proved his innocence in 1994, it took another 10 years of legal appeals to exonerate him. The state fought his release until another man finally came forward and confessed to the crime.
As soon as he was released, Darryl joined the movement to end the death penalty and founded the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and justice, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public about criminal justice reform opportunities, advocating for the wrongfully convicted, and supporting people who are recently released from prison.
He traveled across North Carolina, and across the country, telling his story and using his case to illustrate the flaws of the criminal justice system. His advocacy was key to the passage of the groundbreaking N.C. Racial Justice Act in 2009, which allowed death row inmates to challenge their sentences based on evidence of systemic racial bias
Darryl also understood the pain and trauma of murder, because his own mother was murdered when he was a child. That crime was never solved.
In 2012, Darryl received an honorary doctorate from Duke University for his unceasing work. In April, he was to be honored with the ACLU’s Paul Green Award for people who have made important efforts to abolish or reform the death penalty.
Until shortly before his death, he was still speaking in college classrooms and advocating for innocent people in prison. He was passionate but soft spoken and unfailingly generous.
Darryl will be deeply missed by all who knew him. His many contributions to the cause of justice will be his enduring legacy.
New website tracks N.C. wrongful capital prosecutions
CDPL and the N.C. Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty have just launched a new interactive project: On Trial for Their Lives. Much like the National Registry of Exonerations tracks the cases of people who are wrongly convicted, this website tracks the cases of people who are wrongly targeted with the death penalty in North Carolina. Learn more about the dangerous and all-too-common practice of prosecuting even the weakest cases capitally, and search for cases across North Carolina.
Darryl Hunt wins award for work to end death penalty
CDPL board member Darryl Hunt is this year’s winner of the ACLU’s Paul Green Award for people who have made important efforts to abolish or reform the death penalty.
We cannot imagine a more deserving recipient. Darryl spent 19 years in prison and was nearly sentenced to death for a murder he didn’t commit. He received a sentence of life in prison because a single juror refused to vote for the death penalty.
“If I had gotten a death sentence, there’s no doubt in my mind, I would have been executed,” Darryl says.
Although DNA results proved his innocence in 1994, it took another 10 years of legal appeals to exonerate him. The state fought his release until another man finally came forward and confessed to the crime.
Since his release in 2004, Darryl has devoted his life to advocating nationwide for ending the death penalty. In 2005, he founded the Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating the public about criminal justice reform opportunities, advocating for the wrongfully convicted, and supporting people who are recently released from prison. He was a key advocate for the passage in 2009 of the groundbreaking N.C. Racial Justice Act, which allowed death row inmates to challenge their sentences based on evidence of systemic racial bias.
In 2012, Darryl received an honorary doctorate from Duke University for his work. He also joined the CDPL board of directors that year.
Buy tickets here for the April 2 Liberty Awards Dinner honoring Darryl and other civil liberties heroes.
No new death sentences, few capital trials in 2015
As 2015 draws to a close, CDPL has reason to celebrate: There were no new death sentences this year in North Carolina.
In the past five years, no more than three people have been sent to death row in a single year. And in 2012, we had another full year with no death sentences.
This year brought still more signs that the death penalty is dying in North Carolina. 2015 saw only four capital trials. Meanwhile, executions remained on hold for the ninth straight year, and the murder rate remains lower than in years where executions were monthly occurrences.
We have come a long way since the 1990s, when more than two dozen people were sentenced to death each year and the state was executing defendants at a rapid clip. We got here with hard work and persistence.
In 2015, CDPL’s work remained integral to slowing the death penalty’s pace in North Carolina:
- We continued to litigate issues with the state’s lethal injection protocol, which is the main reason executions remain on hold in North Carolina. This year, we defeated the state’s efforts to expedite that litigation and restart executions.
- We also continued to provide substantial assistance to capital defense attorneys, helping to ensure fair outcomes for defendants on trial for their lives.
- We drew enormous public attention to the threat the death penalty poses to innocent defendants, both with our June report on the wrongfully prosecuted and by telling the story of Henry McCollum, a CDPL client who received a pardon of innocence from the governor this year.
- We continued to put a spotlight on race discrimination in jury selection. Evidence from the Racial Justice Act hearings was cited in the national press and in a brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court as it considered a case with racially-charged prosecution notes that mirrored those of RJA defendant Quintel Augustine. We also published a widely circulated op-ed on the exclusion of African Americans from capital juries.
- Also this year, longtime CDPL client Kenny Neal was resentenced to life imprisonment after 19 years on death row. The court found that Neal could not be executed because of his intellectual disability.
We head for 2016 with optimism that the death penalty will soon be a relic of North Carolina’s past.
CDPL honors defense attorneys with Osborn and Stein Awards
CDPL is proud to announce that longtime capital defender Bob Hurley is the recipient of the 2015 J. Kirk Osborn Award, for outstanding work on behalf of indigent clients facing the death penalty. This year, CDPL also presented the first Adam Stein Award for appellate advocacy and work to raise the standard of practice in capital cases. N.C. Appellate Defender Staples Hughes was the recipient of that award. We thank Bob and Staples for decades of important work to save the lives of vulnerable defendants. Learn more about CDPL’s awards here.
In wake of McCollum exoneration, CDPL releases groundbreaking new report
On Trial for their Lives: The Hidden Costs of Wrongful Prosecutions, a new report from the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, finds that the death penalty in North Carolina is being used broadly and indiscriminately, with little regard for the strength of the evidence against defendants — and putting innocent people at risk of being sentenced to die. It is the first study in the United States of cases in which people were charged or prosecuted capitally but never convicted. Its findings shed new light on how innocent people get caught up in the death penalty system.
CDPL client receives pardon of innocence from N.C. governor
CDPL client Henry McCollum has been granted a rare pardon of innocence by Gov. Pat McCrory, and is now eligible for up to $750,000 in compensation for the 30 years he spent on death row. McCollum was N.C.’s longest serving death row inmate when he was exonerated in September 2014. CDPL represented McCollum for 20 years, along with attorneys from the law firm of WilmerHale in Boston, and the N.C. Innocence Inquiry Commission conducted substantial investigation in the case. Read about this tragic case here.
CDPL attorney wins national prize for defending the condemned
Longtime CDPL attorney Ken Rose has been awarded the National Legal Aid & Defender Association‘s 2015 Kutak-Dodds Prize for his extraordinary commitment to defending indigent clients facing the death penalty. The association says: “Kenneth Rose is honored for his life-time commitment to public defense work for nearly 35 years in Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina. Rose has spent his entire career representing low-income clients on death row, many of whom are mentally ill and intellectually disabled. He has played a key role in advocacy efforts to limit the death penalty, helping to enact a North Carolina statute barring the death penalty for persons with intellectual disabilities and another that allowed death row prisoners to present statistical disparities and other evidence to show that race played an impermissible role in their cases.” Rose has also helped to free several innocent men from death row, the most recent of which was Henry McCollum.