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In 2020, the North Carolina death penalty’s racist origins came into sharp focus

December 16, 2020 By Kristin Collins

For Immediate Release: December 15, 2020
For More Information Contact: Gretchen Engel, CDPL – gretchen@cdpl.org 919-682-3983

Durham — As 2020 ends, the North Carolina death penalty occupies a precarious position in a state coming to terms with systemic racism and sweeping injustice in its criminal punishment system.

There were no new death sentences in 2020, which marks three of the past four years with no death verdicts. Even as federal executions resumed at a stunning pace, North Carolina passed its fourteenth year without an execution. Meanwhile, dozens of the state’s 138 death row prisoners are poised to bring forward claims of racism in their trials and sentences under the Racial Justice Act.

Also, on Monday, Governor Cooper’s Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice released a report acknowledging that the death penalty has a close “relationship to white supremacy” and lynching. The task force recommended a Truth and Reconciliation Commission that would, among other things, study racial disparities in death sentencing, review commutations of death sentences imposed before 2001, and consider replacing the death penalty with a maximum sentence of life without parole. The task force also recommended that the death penalty be prohibited for people with serious mental illness and those under 21, and said juvenile offenses should no longer be used as aggravating factors in death penalty trials.

“Any honest attempt at truth and reconciliation must begin with the acknowledgment that the modern death penalty is rooted in racism,” said CDPL Executive Director Gretchen M. Engel. “North Carolina’s death penalty was used first as a tool for enforcing slavery and then to police segregation. It’s no wonder that today we have a death penalty riddled with inequity. From the disproportionate numbers of people of color on death row to the death sentencing of innocent Black men, from the exclusion of African-American jurors to the favoring of white victims. If we want to move forward as a society, we must reckon with that.”

In October, CDPL released Racist Roots: Origins of North Carolina’s Death Penalty, a sweeping project that puts the modern death penalty in the context of its history. Dozens of scholars, artists, advocates, and people directly affected by the death penalty contributed to the project, which reveals how racism has shaped and perpetuated the modern death penalty.

Also this year, the N.C. Supreme Court recognized in a series of rulings that race discrimination is a serious and ongoing problem in death row cases.

The court ruled in June that all death-sentenced people who had filed claims under the N.C. Racial Justice Act are entitled to hearings where they can present evidence that prosecutors excluded African-American citizens from their juries and that racism tainted their trials. In two subsequent decisions, the court ruled that four people who had already proven discrimination under the Racial Justice Act had to be removed from death row and resentenced to life without parole, ensuring that death sentences infected by racism will never be carried out. One of those decisions noted North Carolina’s “egregious legacy of the racially discriminatory application” of the death penalty.

“This year, our state’s highest court said very clearly that it’s time to stop ignoring racism in the death penalty,” Engel said. “It’s time to confront the clear and undeniable evidence that race still determines who is sentenced to death.”

Engel continued, “Ending the death penalty is just one small part of what’s needed to finally begin erasing the stain of racism from our criminal punishment system, but it’s an important first step. As long as the state is still trying to execute people in our names, we cannot say we are serious about rooting out the legacy of slavery and racial terror.”

Filed Under: Press Releases

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

October 5, 2020 By Kristin Collins

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 

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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.”

Filed Under: CDPL News, Press Releases

N.C. Supreme Court once again recognizes pervasive evidence of racism in North Carolina’s death penalty

September 25, 2020 By Kristin Collins

September 25, 2020

For More Information Contact:
David Weiss, CDPL Senior Staff Attorney, 919-593-7790, dcweiss@cdpl.org

Raleigh, NC — Three death row prisoners were resentenced to life without parole Friday after the N.C. Supreme Court ruled that they had been unconstitutionally returned to death row after receiving life sentences under the state’s Racial Justice Act.

Christina Walters, Quintel Augustine, and Tilmon Golphin will be removed from death row because they proved that race was a significant factor in their sentences. The decisions in their cases are based on the state constitution and cannot be appealed.

Friday’s decisions marked the final rulings in a series by the state Supreme Court, which affirmed that rights granted under the 2009 Racial Justice Act had been wrongly taken away from death-sentenced people who have brought forward evidence of racial discrimination in their trials and sentences.

“We are grateful to the court for upholding the law that says a person cannot be sentenced to death twice for the same crime,” said CDPL Senior Staff Attorney David Weiss. “Our clients proved that race was a major factor in their death sentences. Their evidence has never been disputed, and they never should have been sent back to death row.”

The North Carolina legislature passed the Racial Justice Act in 2009. It led to a statewide study showing that, in capital trials, prosecutors dismissed Black citizens at 2.5 times the rate they excluded whites. This disparity was driven entirely by race and could not be attributed to any other factor, such as death penalty views. It also found that crimes with white victims were twice as likely to be punished with death.

Walters, Augustine, and Golphin — along with Marcus Robinson, who was resentenced to life in August — were the only four death row prisoners to have Racial Justice Act hearings before the law was repealed in 2013. All four won their cases, using the study to show a pattern of race discrimination in North Carolina capital cases. The defendants also unearthed prosecutors’ notes referring to jurors with denigrating terms like “blk wino,” and training materials showing that their prosecutors had been instructed on how to invent “race-neutral” reasons to justify their strikes of Black jurors.

In 2012, Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Gregory Weeks resentenced all four to life without parole after finding a “wealth of evidence” that systemic exclusion of Black jurors had tainted their death sentences. However, after the repeal of the Racial Justice Act, the N.C. Supreme Court overturned Weeks’ ruling on procedural grounds, saying the hearings should have been held separately rather than jointly and that prosecutors should have had more time to prepare their case, even though the trial court had already given the state two continuances. The court ordered new RJA hearings for the four defendants, and in a legally questionable move, the N.C. Department of Public Safety quickly returned them to death row.

Now, the Supreme Court has ruled that the reinstatement of their death sentences was unconstitutional and has restored life sentences for all four.

In a separate ruling in June, the court also said that all North Carolina death row prisoners who filed RJA claims before the law’s 2013 repeal are entitled to hearings where they can present evidence that prosecutors purposefully excluded African American citizens from their juries and that racism tainted their trials. The courts have not yet decided how those cases will proceed.

“The court has again affirmed what we already knew,” Weiss said. “The Racial Justice Act was a necessary law that revealed an epidemic of racism in death penalty cases. We cannot sweep that evidence under the rug. And we certainly cannot execute people who’ve proven that racism played a part in their sentences.”

Filed Under: Press Releases

N.C. Supreme Court decision says Racial Justice Act is key to ending death penalty racism

August 14, 2020 By Kristin Collins

August 14, 2020

For More Information Contact:
Gretchen Engel, CDPL Executive Director – gretchen@cdpl.org 919-682-3983
Henderson Hill, ACLU Capital Punishment Project Attorney – HHill@aclu.org 704-502-1145

Raleigh, NC — On Friday, the North Carolina Supreme Court issued a historic call for the state to address and rise above its history of excluding Black citizens from jury service and allowing racial bias to seep into the prosecution of capital cases. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Cheri Beasley wrote, “equal protection to all must be given—not merely promised” and pointed to an “egregious legacy of the racially discriminatory application” of the death penalty. 

The 4-3 ruling came in the case of Marcus Robinson, the first death row prisoner to be resentenced to life without parole under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act. The court found that Robinson had been unconstitutionally returned to death row, despite unrefuted proof that Black jurors were intentionally denied the right to serve on his jury. The court ruled that Robinson cannot be executed, but may serve a life sentence instead, because of the “overwhelming evidence” of racial bias presented in his case.

“Robinson’s claims under the RJA do not negate or diminish his guilt or the impact of his crimes on the victim’s family, the victim’s friends, and the community,” Chief Justice Cheri Beasley wrote. “Rather, the Act ensured that even those who commit the most serious offenses are entitled to a trial and sentencing free from racial discrimination.”

Read the full decision here.

“This is one of the most important decisions I’ve ever seen from our state Supreme Court,” said CDPL Executive Director Gretchen Engel. “It seems that Justice Beasley and her colleagues intend to make good on the promise that no person should be executed if race was a factor in their death sentence. This is a critical issue of racial justice, both for people on death row and for African Americans seeking to participate in our democracy. It’s heartening to see the court recognizing that fact, in all its difficulty and complexity, and taking bold action.”

The decision marked the second time in three months that the state Supreme Court forcefully rejected a legislative effort to void the Racial Justice Act and bury the evidence of racially-biased death sentences that the law revealed. In June, the court ruled that all death row prisoners who filed claims under the Racial Justice Act are entitled to hearings, even though the law was repealed in 2013.

Friday’s decision, in addition to finding clear evidence of discrimination against African American jurors in Robinson’s case, recognized the connection between modern jury selection practices and the centuries-long history of racism in America. It chronicled “the many ways African Americans have struggled to participate in our democratic processes,” beginning with post-Civil War laws explicitly barring Black people from jury service and then morphing into Jim Crow-era poll taxes and literacy tests. It described the modern peremptory strike as the newest tactic used to remove qualified Black citizens from juries.

The court made a strong case for the Racial Justice Act’s necessity, saying it was passed in response to the failure of North Carolina courts to enforce federal standards barring racially motivated jury strikes. “The goal of this historic legislation was simple: to abolish racial discrimination from capital sentencing. That is, to ensure that no person in this state is put to death because of the color of their skin,” Beasley wrote.

The North Carolina legislature passed the Racial Justice Act in 2009. It led to a statewide study showing that, in capital trials, prosecutors dismissed Black citizens at 2.5 times the rate they excluded whites. This disparity was driven entirely by race and could not be attributed to any other factor, such as death penalty views.

Robinson, along with Quintel Augustine, Tilmon Golphin, and Christina Walters, were the only four death row prisoners to have Racial Justice Act hearings before the law was repealed in 2013. All four defendants won their cases, using the study to show a pattern of discrimination that denied them the right to a jury of their peers. In addition to the study, the defendants unearthed prosecutors’ notes referring to jurors with denigrating terms like “blk wino,” and training materials showing that their prosecutors had been instructed on how to invent “race-neutral” reasons to justify their strikes of Black jurors.

In 2012, Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Gregory A. Weeks resentenced all four to life without parole after finding a “wealth of evidence” that systemic exclusion of Black jurors had tainted their death sentences. Friday’s decision recognized that Weeks’ findings were “meticulously detailed.” However, over the next few years, though their evidence of racial bias was never disproven, they were again placed at risk of execution.

After the repeal of the Racial Justice Act, the N.C. Supreme Court overturned Weeks’ ruling on procedural grounds, saying the hearings should have been held separately rather than jointly and that prosecutors should have had more time to prepare their case, even though the trial court had already given the state two continuances. The court ordered new RJA hearings for the four defendants, and in a legally questionable move, the N.C. Department of Public Safety quickly returned them to death row.

Then, when they requested the hearings the Supreme Court had ordered, a Superior Court judge refused to hold them, saying that the defendants were no longer entitled to hearings because the law had been repealed. All four appealed to the state Supreme Court, but the court has not yet decided the cases of Augustine, Golphin and Walters.

“Our clients ended up in the ultimate Catch-22,” Engel said. “They had clear proof of racism that they presented under a valid law. Then, the state Supreme Court asked them to present the evidence again. When they tried to do that, the state said, ‘Sorry, too late. The law no longer exists.’ Today, this Supreme Court, under the strong leadership of Chief Justice Beasley, said that North Carolina must stop playing games with justice and start looking at the big picture, which clearly shows that our death penalty is racist.”

Advocates said they believe the evidence of racial bias in capital prosecutions, uncovered as a result of the Racial Justice Act, raises serious questions about the legitimacy of North Carolina’s death penalty.

“It’s unthinkable that we could amass a mountain of evidence showing that race plays a role in the North Carolina death penalty and then just ignore it and return to executing people,” said Henderson Hill, an ACLU attorney who is part of the Racial Justice Act litigation. “Today, the high court declared that it’s unacceptable for North Carolina to keep its head in the sand, and we are grateful. It is time for everyone in North Carolina to ask themselves, after decades of racially-biased prosecutions, whether the state should still have the right to carry out executions.”

 

 

Filed Under: Press Releases

Landmark N.C. Supreme Court ruling brings death penalty racism into spotlight

June 5, 2020 By Kristin Collins

June 5, 2020

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Henderson Hill, ACLU Capital Punishment Project Attorney – hhill@aclu.org 704-502-1145
Donald Beskind, Attorney and Duke Law Professor – beskind@law.duke.edu 919-612-3955
Gretchen Engel, CDPL Executive Director – gretchen@cdpl.org 919-682-3983

Raleigh, NC — The North Carolina Supreme Court today issued two landmark civil rights rulings on the Racial Justice Act, clearing the way for a much-needed review of racial discrimination in death penalty cases across the state.

The court decided 6-1 Friday that Rayford Burke and Andrew Ramseur, prisoners on North Carolina’s death row, were entitled to hearings where they can present evidence that prosecutors purposefully excluded African American citizens from their juries and that racism tainted their trials. The rulings also mean that death row prisoners across North Carolina who filed claims under the N.C. Racial Justice Act before its repeal in 2013 are entitled to present their evidence in court. The justices decided the case under the state constitution, so it cannot be appealed. [Read the full decisions: Ramseur and Burke.]

“This is a momentous decision that sends a clear message: Our state’s highest court will not allow North Carolina to ignore evidence that racism has infected the death penalty,” said CDPL Executive Director Gretchen M. Engel. “This was also an urgently needed decision as our state and our nation confront a long history of racism. The death penalty is the apex of a criminal legal system that has failed people of color.”

The court has not yet decided the cases of four other RJA defendants, Marcus Robinson, Quintel Augustine, Christina Walters, and Tilmon Golphin, who initially won their cases but saw them overturned on appeal.

The ruling comes just days after Chief Justice Cheri Beasley responded to protests against police violence with a candid admission that North Carolina’s courts have helped perpetuate racial disparities. “We must come together to firmly and loudly commit to the declaration that all people are created equal, and we must do more than just speak that truth,” Beasley said. “We must live it every day in our courtrooms.”

Justice Anita Earls authored the decision, and affirmed that it was about more than two individual defendants. She wrote that “the harm from racial discrimination in criminal cases is not limited to an individual defendant, but rather it undermines the integrity of our judicial system and extends to society as a whole.”

At oral arguments in August, Burke and Ramseur presented stark evidence. Both are black men convicted by all-white juries in Iredell County. Prosecutors at Burke’s trial referred to him during closing arguments as a “big black bull.” Ramseur’s trial was shadowed by widespread threats of lynching, and the judge and sheriff forced his family to sit in the back of the courtroom while the white family of the victim sat in front.

“This decision is built on basic fairness,” said Don Beskind, a Durham attorney and Duke Law professor involved in the litigation. “The evidence in these death penalty cases was stark and undeniable. The very least we can do is allow it to be heard in court. Even our most conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices, most recently Justice Kavanaugh, have said that race discrimination in jury selection is a serious long-standing problem that courts must address.”

Burke and Ramseur, like most of the people on North Carolina’s death row, first presented this evidence shortly after the N.C. legislature created the Racial Justice Act, which allowed death-sentenced people to bring forward evidence of racism in their trials. Those who could prove that race was a significant factor in their sentences would be resentenced to life in prison without parole. The law’s passage marked the first time a death penalty state allowed for a systematic review of racial bias in capital cases.

A statistical study commissioned as a result of the RJA found overwhelming evidence that, in scores of North Carolina capital cases over two decades, prosecutors illegally struck black jurors because of their race. And death row prisoners across North Carolina unearthed disturbing evidence of racism in their trials that had never before been examined by the courts.

However, in 2013, after the first four RJA defendants won their cases, a new legislature repealed the RJA. This same legislature was found by the U.S. Supreme Court to have enacted racially discriminatory voting laws. The RJA repeal legislation sought to invalidate all pending cases and prevent any court review of the evidence of bias that was uncovered. In its decision today, the Supreme Court rejected that gambit, saying that the evidence of rampant discrimination against black North Carolinians was too troubling to ignore.

Friday’s ruling was based on the precedent of State v. Keith, an 1869 case in which the N.C. Supreme Court ruled that a Confederate soldier charged with war crimes was protected by a post-Civil War amnesty law and could not be prosecuted, even though the amnesty law had since been repealed. The death row prisoners argued that if the Constitution protects Confederate war criminals, it must also protect their right to present evidence of race discrimination against black jurors even after the repeal of the Racial Justice Act.

“In light of decades, if not centuries, of mistreatment and brutalization of black citizens at the hands of America’s criminal system, today’s decision to take the death penalty off the table when there is evidence of racial bias is just one small but important step toward achieving the broad-based reform needed in North Carolina, and across the country,” said Henderson Hill, a prominent ACLU attorney who represents RJA defendants. “It’s  something to celebrate, but also a reminder that we must keep working for justice.”

ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND:

  • Go here for more detail on the Racial Justice Act.
  • Read Bryan Stevenson’s op-ed on the importance of the Racial Justice Act.

Filed Under: Press Releases

State Supreme Court Takes First Step Toward Addressing the Exclusion of Black jurors in North Carolina

May 4, 2020 By Kristin Collins

May 4, 2020

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
CDPL Attorney David Weiss: dcweiss@cdpl.org, 919-593-7790
James E. Coleman, Jr.: jcoleman@law.duke.edu, 919-414-2017

Raleigh, NC — A new decision from the North Carolina Supreme Court has taken an important first step to address a problem that civil rights advocates have long highlighted: the epidemic of race-based exclusion of black citizens from jury service in North Carolina.

In the case of Cedric Hobbs, the court ruled 6 to 1 Friday that the judge at Hobbs’ 2014 murder trial allowed the prosecutor to strike African American citizens from the jury without fully considering the evidence that race was a key factor in their strikes.

The decision marks a turning point in North Carolina, where two separate studies have found that qualified black citizens are struck from juries at more than twice the rate of qualified white citizens. It will begin a culture change in a state where trial judges routinely dismiss complaints of racially motivated jury strikes without thorough investigation, and where the appellate courts have never in their history upheld a claim of race discrimination against a juror of color.

“For a long time, our courts have stood by as scores of black citizens have been denied the basic civil right to serve on a jury,” said David Weiss, Senior Staff Attorney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation. “The North Carolina Supreme Court has just said that has to change.”

The decision established that, when claims of race discrimination against jurors are raised, judges must take into consideration the history of disproportionate strikes in that county. For instance, in Cumberland County where Hobbs was tried, studies show that prosecutors were about 2.5 times more likely to strike qualified potential jurors who were black, a statistically significant finding.

The courts also must compare the strikes of black jurors to those of white jurors, to see if they are held to similar standards. For example, at Hobbs’ trial, the defense alleged that the prosecutor struck a black juror based on his race. When the judge asked the prosecutor to state his reasons for the strike, the prosecutor claimed he struck the juror because the juror had experience with mental health professionals. The judge accepted this reason as “race neutral” without considering the fact that several white jurors who the prosecutor accepted had received extensive mental health treatment. Such comparative juror analysis is key to rooting out discriminatory intent in jury strikes.

Cedric Hobbs was convicted of robbery and murder in 2014 and is serving a sentence of life without parole. His case will now return to a Cumberland County trial court for a new hearing on whether black jurors were unlawfully excluded from his jury. If the court finds that they were unfairly struck, he will get a new trial.

However, legal experts say the salient aspect of the decision is the precedent it sets for future cases.

“What’s most important is the message that courts across North Carolina must vigorously investigate the reasons why jurors of color are excluded, not simply rubber stamp the prosecutor’s strikes,” said James E. Coleman, Jr., John S. Bradway Professor of the Practice of Law, Director of the Center for Criminal Justice and Professional Responsibility, and Co-Director of the Wrongful Convictions Clinic at Duke Law School. “This decision is a good starting point in addressing North Carolina’s shameful record of denying African Americans their civil right to serve on juries. These issues will continue to come up. As they do, my hope is that the state supreme court will continue to take this civil rights problem seriously, by enforcing and strengthening legal protections against race discrimination.”

Filed Under: Press Releases

N.C. Supreme Court to Decide Whether to Finally Recognize Racial Discrimination in the Jury Box

February 3, 2020 By Kristin Collins

Monday, February 3, 2020                                                 

FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Miriam Krinsky, Fair and Just Prosecution, krinskym@krinsky.la, (818) 416 5218
David Weiss, Center for Death Penalty Litigation, dcweiss@cdpl.org, (919) 593-7790

RALEIGH, N.C. – On February 3, at 9:30 a.m., the North Carolina Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the cases of two criminal defendants, Cory Bennett of Sampson County and Cedric Hobbs of Cumberland County. In both cases the court must decide whether prosecutors illegally excluded black citizens from juries because of their race. If the court decides in the defendants’ favor, it will be the first time in North Carolina’s history that the high court has acknowledged race discrimination against jurors of color. 

“These cases are about far more than these two defendants,” said Duke Law Professor James Coleman, a scholar on race and the law who filed an amicus brief in both cases. “They’re about whether North Carolina’s high court will finally confront the problem of African Americans being systematically denied the right to wield power in our justice system. For too long, this discrimination has been an open secret, ignored at the highest levels of North Carolina’s justice system. Now, our court has the chance to say that race discrimination in the jury box must end.”

Two recent studies found that qualified black citizens in North Carolina are excluded from juries at more than twice the rate of white people, denying defendants the right to be judged by a fair cross section of their community. Research has also found that juries with two or more members of color deliberate longer, discuss a wider range of evidence, and are more accurate in their statements about cases, regardless of the defendant’s race. And as recently as June of last year, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote an opinion in Flowers v. Mississippi warning that race discrimination in jury selection is a pressing problem that courts must address.

Despite this, a recent analysis revealed that North Carolina’s high courts have failed to enforce the law established in Batson v. Kentucky, a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision that barred racially-motivated jury exclusion. In the thirty years since Batson, more than a hundred North Carolina defendants have raised claims of race discrimination against jurors of color. Yet, the state’s appellate courts have never upheld a single one of those claims.

“Now, the N.C. Supreme Court has a chance to make a clean break from this unfortunate track record, and chart a new path forward,” Coleman said. “There is no question that black citizens are unfairly excluded from jury service because of their race. The only question is whether the North Carolina courts will finally provide meaningful protection from this longstanding civil rights violation.”

North Carolina’s appellate courts stand alone among southern states in failing to acknowledge this type of discrimination. Courts in every southern state, except North Carolina, have enforced the law against jury discrimination and overturned convictions because of racial discrimination against jurors of color. Alabama, for example, has had more than 80 appellate reversals because of racially-tainted jury selection.

The evidence in the cases now before the court mirrors what has been found in studies of broad patterns in North Carolina. In both trials, prosecutors used most or all of their strikes to remove black jurors. When asked to explain their strikes, prosecutors cited characteristics virtually identical to those of white jurors who were accepted. Bennett and Hobbs will get new trials if the court decides in their favor.

If the North Carolina Supreme Court finds race discrimination in these cases, it will join other state courts that have recently confronted the issue, such as Washington, Nevada and Connecticut. All have taken steps to end racial discrimination, including reversing convictions marred by racial bias, crafting new legal approaches, and appointing study commissions on jury discrimination. 

Several national organizations, along with North Carolina civil rights leaders and advocacy groups, have filed “friend of the court” briefs urging the North Carolina Supreme Court to take action. These groups include Fair and Just Prosecution, the North Carolina NAACP, the North Carolina. Advocates for Justice, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, the Anti-Defamation League, Latino Justice and the Korematsu Center for Law and Equality. 

“The exclusion of African Americans from the jury box is a fundamental civil rights problem rooted in our shared history of subjugation and segregation based on race,” said Miriam Krinsky, a former federal prosecutor and Executive Director of Fair and Just Prosecution. “It will take a concerted effort at every level of the justice system to solve this problem. Right now, the North Carolina Supreme Court has a chance to step up to the task, apply the law fairly, and send a message that North Carolina’s tolerance of this injustice must end.”

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 Fair and Just Prosecution is a national network of elected prosecutors working towards common-sense, compassionate criminal justice reforms. To learn more about FJP’s work, visit http://www.fairandjustprosecution.org/ or follow us on Facebook @FairAndJustProsecution.

 Center for Death Penalty Litigation is a non-profit law firm that provides direct representation to inmates on North Carolina’s death row, as well as consulting with and training attorneys who practice capital litigation across the state. In addition to representing individual clients, CDPL spearheads litigation that addresses systemic injustices and educates the public about the death penalty. To learn more about CDPL’s work visit https://www.cdpl.org.

 

Additional background information

 State v. Cory Bennett was tried in 2016 in Sampson County, North Carolina, on charges of possession and trafficking of methamphetamines. Mr. Bennett was convicted and sentenced to a maximum of 13 years in prison. During jury selection, the prosecutor used only two peremptory strikes to remove jurors, both against African-Americans. When the defense lawyer objected that the strikes were racially motivated, the trial judge overruled the objection and did not even require the State to explain its reasons for the strikes. The trial judge instead questioned the defense lawyer about her strikes against, what the judge termed, “white Americans.” The N.C. Court of Appeals found no error, but the N.C. Supreme Court decided to review the case further, even though it was not required to do so.

State v. Cedric Hobbs was tried in 2014 in Cumberland County, North Carolina, on one charge of first-degree murder related to the armed robbery of a pawn shop. Mr. Hobbs was convicted. The State sought the death penalty, but the jury chose a sentence of life imprisonment. During jury selection, the prosecution used eight peremptory strikes to remove jurors, six of whom were black. When the defense lawyer objected, the prosecutor responded defensively that the objection “was somehow [saying] we’re just racists in this county.” The trial judge required the prosecutor to explain the reasons for striking the black jurors, but nonetheless overruled the defense. The N.C. Court of Appeals reviewed the case and found no error, but the N.C. Supreme Court granted discretionary review. The defense argues the State’s strikes were discriminatory because the prosecutor cited “race-neutral” traits that caused them to remove black jurors but accepted white jurors with the very same traits. A statistical study showed the prosecutor’s office in this county has a twenty-year track record of removing black jurors at twice the rate that they remove all other jurors. And the prosecutors in this case questioned black jurors very closely on certain issues but did not closely question white jurors who had the same characteristics. 

Discrimination against jurors of color is a major problem in North Carolina. Studies show that North Carolina’s appellate courts have failed to police jury discrimination. Other studies show the effect of this failure: such discrimination is rampant in North Carolina’s trial courts. These studies are discussed in an article published in NACDL’s legal magazine, The Champion. That article also highlights efforts by several state supreme courts to address the problem. In addition, in December 2019, the Connecticut State Supreme Court announced a new Jury Selection Task Force, because “allow[ing] the systematic removal of minority jurors . . . create[s] a badge of inferiority, cheapening the value of the jury verdict.” It is time for North Carolina to take similar steps to enforce and update its own laws barring race discrimination in jury selection.

The briefs in the two cases, including amicus briefs, can be found here.

Filed Under: Press Releases

North Carolina Supreme Court to Address Racial Bias in Death Penalty

August 19, 2019 By Kristin Collins

Justices must decide whether evidence of jury discrimination in capital cases will come to light

For Immediate Release: August 19, 2019
For More Information Contact: David Weiss, 919-593-7790 or Jin Hee Lee, 917-202-8848

Raleigh, NC — The N.C. Supreme Court will hear arguments next week, August 26 and 27, in the cases of six death row prisoners who have presented evidence that racial bias tainted their trials and death sentences.

The Racial Justice Act (RJA) was a first-of-its-kind law that allowed for a systematic review of racial discrimination in death penalty trials. Death row prisoners who proved discrimination had to be resentenced to life in prison without parole. The law was enacted in 2009, and its passage led to the uncovering of new evidence of discrimination. In 2013 a newly elected legislature repealed the RJA. That same legislature enacted voting laws that federal courts later determined to be racially motivated.

Now, the Supreme Court must decide whether the six defendants, who filed claims while the law was in effect, have a constitutional right to present their evidence of discrimination in court. The state seeks to dismiss all six defendants’ RJA claims without hearings.

“The court must answer a key question for North Carolina,” said David Weiss, a staff attorney with Durham’s Center for Death Penalty Litigation, one of several law firms that represents the RJA defendants. “Will our state abide by its constitution and confront the evidence that race has played an unacceptable role in death penalty trials? Or will we throw the evidence away without a hearing and send the message that pervasive racial bias doesn’t matter, even in life-and-death trials?”

The court will hear the following cases:

Marcus Robinson, Tilmon Golphin, Christina Walters, and Quintel Augustine from Cumberland County are the only four death row prisoners whose RJA cases were heard in court. In 2012, they won and were resentenced to life in prison without parole. On appeal, all four were returned to death row after the N.C. Supreme Court sent their cases back to Superior Court for a redo, saying that each defendant should get a separate hearing and that the state should be given more time to prepare. Yet, when the cases went back to Superior Court, a judge dismissed them without new hearings. The Supreme Court will decide whether Robinson, Golphin, Walters and Augustine have a right to the life sentences they previously won under the RJA, or whether they have a right to new hearings.

Andrew Ramseur and Rayford Burke are death row prisoners from Iredell County who filed RJA claims before the law’s repeal, but never got hearings. After the repeal, judges dismissed their claims, saying they no longer had a right to present evidence because the law was defunct. The Court will decide whether Ramseur and Burke have a constitutional right to litigate their claims.

The six defendants found a cache of evidence of race discrimination:

  • A prosecutor referred to Burke as “a big black bull” during closing arguments.
    During jury selection at Golphin’s trial, two white jurors suggested that Golphin should have been lynched, yet were allowed to remain in the jury pool.
  • At Ramseur’s trial, the sheriff’s department cordoned off the area behind the defense table with crime scene tape, prejudicing the jury and forcing the defendant’s black family to sit in the back of the courtroom.
  • A black juror in Robinson’s case was questioned about whether he had gone “straight through” school, implying he may have repeated grades. The prosecutor also questioned his ability to read. White jurors were not asked these demeaning questions.
  • In Augustine’s case, prosecutors wrote insulting notes about black jurors. A black juror with criminal history was a “thug” while a white juror who trafficked in drugs was “a fine guy.” A black juror was a “blk wino” while a white juror with a DUI conviction was a “country boy – ok.” A Black woman was acceptable because she was “from a respectable BLK family.”
  • In several cases, prosecutors relied on a “cheat sheet” of prefabricated reasons to justify striking black jurors.
  • In all cases, a statistical study showed that prosecutors struck qualified black jurors at far higher rates than white jurors, denying African American citizens the fundamental right to wield power in the jury box and defendants the right to a jury of their peers.

“These defendants uncovered a mountain of evidence that race played a role in their death sentences. Now, the law requires that our state deal with that evidence,” Weiss said. “If the justices don’t allow these defendants a fair hearing, North Carolina will have given up even the pretense of believing in justice for all.”

Racial discrimination in the jury box is a national problem, which was highlighted again in June when the U.S. Supreme Court granted a new trial to Mississippi death row prisoner Curtis Flowers because the prosecutor systematically excluded black jurors over the course of six trials.

“Jury discrimination is one of the key civil rights issues of our time,” said Jin Hee Lee, Senior Deputy Director of Litigation for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which filed a brief in support of the RJA cases. Founded by Thurgood Marshall, LDF becomes involved in cases when they present a chance to advance racial justice. Lee continued, “It threatens the integrity of our justice system and our democracy when we allow black citizens to be illegally barred from jury service. We hope North Carolina will give the evidence in these capital cases the serious consideration it deserves, and take needed steps to end race discrimination in North Carolina’s death penalty.”

Oral arguments begin at 9:30 a.m. Monday and Tuesday, Aug. 26 and 27 in the chambers of the N.C. Supreme Court, 2 East Morgan Street, Raleigh. On Monday, the court will hear the cases of Ramseur, Walters, Robinson, Burke, and Augustine. On Tuesday, it will hear Golphin’s case.

Read more from the N.C. Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

For the full briefs filed in the cases, click here.

Filed Under: Press Releases

CDPL Statement on the Death Sentence of Seaga Gillard in Wake County

March 4, 2019 By Kristin Collins

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.

Filed Under: CDPL News, Press Releases

New poll shows death penalty supporters now in the minority among N.C. voters

February 6, 2019 By Kristin Collins

Public concerns grow over racial bias and the execution of innocent people

For Immediate Release: February 6, 2019
For More Information Contact: David Weiss, 919-593-7790

READ THE FULL POLL RESULTS

North Carolina has long been considered a solidly pro-death penalty state, but a new poll finds that N.C. voters overwhelmingly believe the death penalty is error-prone and racially biased – and a majority believe it should be replaced with alternative punishments.

The poll of 501 voters across the state, conducted last week by Public Policy Polling, comes as a capital trial begins in Wake County. It is the first comprehensive statewide survey of death penalty views in North Carolina.

It reveals that a steep decline in new death sentences – North Carolina juries have sent only a single person to death row since 2014 – is the result of a sea change in public opinion about the death penalty that reaches across political divides. Of those polled, 47 percent voted for Donald Trump and 45 percent for Hillary Clinton.

“I was stunned when I saw these numbers,” said David Weiss, a capital defense attorney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham. “Seventy percent of people believe an innocent person has likely been executed in North Carolina. Almost 60 percent believe that racial bias affects who is sentenced to death in our state. With these kinds of serious concerns about the death penalty, it’s inconceivable that North Carolina could execute anyone or even continue to sentence people to death.”

The poll found that voters have concerns about the death penalty’s fairness on several fronts:

  • More than 70 percent said defendants should have the right to bring forward evidence of racial discrimination in capital trials and jury selection.
  • 70 percent believe it is likely that an innocent person has been executed in North Carolina.
  • 68 percent said they support the creation of a new law to exempt people with severe mental illness from the death penalty.
  • 61 percent said they believe the courts should reexamine the death sentences of prisoners who were tried before a series of legal reforms were enacted to protect defendants’ rights and ensure fair trials. More than three-quarters of North Carolina’s death row prisoners were sentenced before these reforms.
  • 57 percent said it is likely that racial bias influences who is sentenced to death.

The poll also showed that voters are willing to consider a range of alternatives to the death penalty:

  • When given a choice between the death penalty and a maximum sentence of life without parole, more than 50 percent of voters said they favor life without parole, while only 44 percent leaned toward keeping the death penalty. The rest were unsure.
  • When offered a larger range of alternatives, including requirements that offenders work and pay restitution to victims’ families, only 25 percent of those polled favored the death penalty.
  • 58 percent said they would prefer to eliminate the death penalty if the millions of dollars spent on it each year were redirected to investigating and prosecuting unsolved rapes and murders.
  • 59 percent said they would support a decision by Gov. Roy Cooper to investigate unfairness in the death penalty and, if necessary, replace it with life without parole.
  • 57 percent said they would support a decision by their local district attorney to stop seeking the death penalty because of concerns about fairness, wrongful convictions, and cost.

North Carolina has not executed anyone since 2006. In the years since, five people who were sentenced to death in North Carolina have been exonerated, more than two dozen others have been removed from death row after the courts found serious errors in their cases, and a statewide study found that black jurors are systematically removed from capital juries, violating defendants’ right to be judged by a fair cross section of the community. Meanwhile, murder rates have declined.

Also, in fall 2018, a new report revealed that more than three quarters of North Carolina’s 140 death row prisoners were sentenced before a series of reforms that are now considered essential to fair trials. Among other things, the reforms ensured qualified capital defense lawyers, allowed defendants access to all evidence in the prosecution’s files, created protocols to prevent false confessions and mistaken identifications, and protected people with serious intellectual disabilities from execution.

Executions are currently barred in North Carolina by court order in a case that challenges the state’s lethal injection procedures. However, that case is on hold while the courts address other systemic questions of fairness in the state’s capital punishment system. First among those are cases filed under the state’s Racial Justice Act, which uncovered evidence of statewide race discrimination in capital cases. Those cases are currently before the N.C. Supreme Court and are expected to be argued later this year.

“The capital punishment system has so many problems that the public has lost faith in it,” said Weiss, who is among several attorneys spearheading statewide litigation about racial bias and the lethal injection process. “And after 12 years without executions, North Carolinians have seen that we can maintain public safety without the death penalty. When there is this level of mistrust in the system, we can no longer have a death penalty in North Carolina.”

Filed Under: Press Releases

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