Frank, third from left, receiving the Osborn Award in 2018 with his law partner, Jon Megerian.

North Carolina has lost a passionate and irreplaceable advocate. On Easter Sunday, renowned capital defense attorney and CDPL Board Vice-President Franklin E. Wells Jr. died suddenly at his home. He was 60. He left behind his wife, Gay, and their three daughters, Annah, Emily and Molly.

Frank was the longtime law partner of Jon Megerian. Together, they ran Megerian & Wells in Asheboro, taking on some of the region’s most difficult capital cases and saving their clients from the death penalty. In 2011, their zealous advocacy won a second-degree murder conviction for a man who overdosed on medications before killing eight people in a Carthage nursing home. And in 2006, they secured a life sentence for a man with severe mental illness who killed four people in Gaston County. In these and other cases, juries were swayed to eschew the death penalty by Frank and Jon’s tireless work to tell the whole story of their clients’ humanity and frailties. In 2018, Frank and Jon won CDPL’s J. Kirk Osborn Award for their decades of stellar lawyering and their commitment to training and mentoring other capital attorneys across North Carolina.

Frank was also involved in statewide litigation that exposed systemic racial inequities in jury selection. In February, he made a powerful argument before the N.C. Supreme Court, in which he urged the court to finally acknowledge racial discrimination against African American jurors. In his typical soft spoken style, he asked the court to reckon with North Carolina’s legacy of racism, and he led by example. He told the seven justices that his own family has lived in North Carolina since 1700 and that historical documents show his ancestors enslaved other human beings. “When I talk about the troubling, very uncomfortable history we have in this state with race, I’m talking about my history too. Until we confront our history of discrimination, we’re going to continue to have problems in this state.”

In addition to working closely with CDPL on many cases, Frank served on the CDPL board for more than a decade. “Frank was a wonderful lawyer and a terrific human being,” said CDPL Executive Director Gretchen M. Engel. “He saved lives in so many cases, and he was ever loyal to his clients. When his former client had a hearing in federal court recently, Frank came to court just to support him, even though it had been more than a decade since Frank represented him. He was a great teacher and donated countless hours to CDPL. Frank was always patient and kind; I respected him tremendously and I’m going to miss him terribly.”

Frank’s family has kindly asked that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to CDPL. Go here to donate in Frank’s memory.

Frank showing off his Osborn Award

CDPL is doing its part to help stop the spread of Covid-19. We have temporarily closed our office in downtown Durham, and all of our attorneys, investigators, and public education specialists are now working remotely. We have also temporarily ceased in-person client meetings to ensure that none of our staff carries the virus into a prison, where people are kept in confined spaces and are extraordinarily vulnerable to illness.

However, CDPL is continuing to fight vigorously for the rights of our clients. We are busy ensuring that employees have access to the technology they need to work on their cases from home. We’re also implementing systems to make sure that our clients can continue to contact their defense team members by mail and by telephone. We are continuously monitoring conditions at Central Prison and intervening on behalf of our clients when necessary. We are also reaching out to trial teams across the state and assisting them in obtaining continuances in light of the pandemic.

Our clients and the public can rest assured that CDPL will continue to zealously fight executions, now and in the future, and to advocate for an end to the cruel and unfair death penalty. You can continue to reach our staff by email and by calling our main phone line. 

Please also continue to check the blog of the N.C. Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty for the latest news about the death penalty.

Black people have a constitutional right to serve on juries, just like white people. That should go without saying. But the reality is that prosecutors use all kinds of tricks and excuses to stop black citizens from sitting on juries. In this 5-minute audio documentary created by students at Duke’s Center for Documentary Studies, CDPL attorney Johanna Jennings explains how this form of racial discrimination persists in the courtroom.

One note: The documentary’s creators, Shaakira Raheem and Khalid Bashr, imagined some fictional questions that prosecutors might ask of black jurors like, “Do you have a birth certificate?” While these are not the actual questions prosecutors have asked black jurors in North Carolina courtrooms, some of the questions they actually have asked are equally outrageous and demeaning. For example:

• In a Cumberland County courtroom, the prosecutor asked a black man if he had trouble reading and whether he went “straight through” school. No white jurors were asked similar questions.
• Another Cumberland prosecutor asked a black man if he listened to Bob Marley or was familiar with the former emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie — implying that he might sympathize with black defendants who practiced Rastafarianism. Again, no white jurors were asked similar questions.
• In Rowan County, a prosecutor asked a black woman if she would face criticism from her black friends if she voted to convict a black person of a crime.
• In Transylvania County, a black juror was asked if her child’s father was paying child support.

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

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

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

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

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

Gretchen Engel

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

Click here to listen to the full story.