June 29
NORTH CAROLINA:
Repeal of NC Racial Justice Act leaves questions about future executions,
legacy in its wake
With the repeal of North Carolina's Racial Justice Act after just four years on
the books, it's uncertain how quickly the state will resume executions or what
the legacy will be for the law that proponents say was intended to rid capital
punishment of racial bias.
Gov. Pat McCrory's signature of approval for the repeal capped off a debate
over the law's intent and effectiveness that started even before it passed the
state legislature in 2009 almost entirely along party lines.
But experts and advocates say the issue of promoting racial equality in the
criminal justice system will remain salient, especially in light of a growing
number of states taking steps to abolish the death penalty completely - which
was always the goal at the heart of the RJA, opponents say.
As approved under then-Gov. Beverly Perdue, a Democrat, the RJA allowed
convicted murderers to use statewide and local statistics to argue that racial
bias in court proceedings and jury selection tainted their convictions, earning
them life sentences instead of lethal injection if a judge agreed.
The law aimed to address bias in jury selection and sentencing, which has been
uncovered in at least 25 states, according to the nonpartisan Death Penalty
Information Center. Studies have shown that juries are far more likely to seek
the death penalty for black-on-white murders and that prosecutors are more
likely to strike African-Americans from juries.
Republicans, who always opposed the idea of commuting individual sentences
using statistics, successfully restricted the use of capital punishment
statistics to the local level with a 2012 amendment that also required other
forms of evidence to overturn a death-penalty ruling.
Before Republicans weakened the law, though, a Cumberland County judge granted
a life sentence to death-row inmate Marcus Robinson under the act largely on
the strength of a Michigan State University study of North Carolina that found
black jurors were more than twice as likely to be struck from juries than their
white counterparts. Judge Greg Weeks also found other evidence of bias among
prosecutors, and he ruled in favor of 3 more inmates under the Racial Justice
Act after the 2012 rollback.
Robinson's case was appealed by the state to the North Carolina Supreme Court,
which agreed in April to review it. Tye Hunter, executive director of the
Durham-based nonprofit Center for Death Penalty Litigation, said he expects the
court will hear the case in late fall. The court hasn't yet agreed to hear the
three other RJA cases.
This year Republicans with supermajorities in both chambers of the General
Assembly mounted a full repeal. They've argued that the law allowed most of the
153 death-row inmates to challenge their sentences regardless of their race,
creating a logjam that amounts to a de-facto moratorium on executions.
Hunter said he doesn't expect executions to begin in the near future because of
existing appeals and all-but-certain challenges among inmates that their due
process rights were violated with the repeal of an act they used to contest
their sentences. Rep. Paul Stam, R-Wake and an attorney, said due process
violations are bogus because the inmates were convicted before the law existed.
He said he would give the state many months, not years, before executions
resume because an appeal about the legality of lethal injections is expected to
be resolved soon.
The state Supreme Court case was once considered a defining test for the Racial
Justice Act with the potential for broader implications. Even with the repeal
of the act, that review could send a signal that either bolsters the case RJA
advocates tried to press for 4 years or prop up the status quo, said Bryan
Stevenson, the executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative and an expert
on racial inequality in the criminal justice system.
"We'll see if that becomes a legacy of this law and litigation or if people
become more comfortable engaging in race-conscious decision-making because they
can do it with impunity," he said.
Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, noted that
national efforts to create legislation along the lines of the Racial Justice
Act and in other states haven't fared well, but at the same time 6 states have
abolished the death penalty since 2007 in large part because of the costs of
administering capital punishment and questions of fairness.
"The next solution might be: Is the death penalty incompatible with our
fairness to justice and equality?" he said. "We don't seem to be able to fix
it, but yet we know the problem persists."
States have taken a skeptical view toward considering statistics in capital
cases since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1987 that studies showing
racial disparities in sentencing couldn't be used to overturn a death penalty
conviction alone, said John Donohue, a Stanford University legal scholar who
specializes in criminal justice. Donohue prepared statistical analysis for a
recent Connecticut Supreme Court effort to commute the sentences of 11 inmates
who remain on death row after the state abolished the death penalty.
Connecticut, like other states, decided the millions of dollars and decades
spent pursuing capital punishment wasn't worth it, Donohue said. There's a
recognition that money could be spent better elsewhere, he said.
"I think the evidence is sort of overwhelming that the way to stop murder is
swift and certain punishment, and Connecticut is only solving about 1/2 their
murders," Donohue said.
But Dieter noted that the states that have abolished the death penalty in
recent years were more politically receptive or had strong minority voices in
state government. Stam noted that public opinion in North Carolina sides with
capital punishment.
"I don't see that changing in the next several years," Stam said.
(source: Associated Press)
USA (NEW YORK):
At $1.6M in taxpayer expense, man convicted of killing 2 NYC officers fights
death sentence
Convicted killer Ronell Wilson came from an impoverished background, but the
spending for his legal defense has been lavish.
The Justice Department, after learning that an appeals court threw out a death
sentence for Wilson in 2011, decided to again seek the ultimate punishment with
a new jury rather than let the defendant serve an automatic life term. Court
officials say since then, at least $1.6 million in taxpayer money has gone to
his defense - and the meter is still running.
The escalating costs are one facet of a decadelong legal odyssey that began
with Wilson's brutal slaying of 2 undercover police officers on the night of
March 10, 2003. It picked up again in Brooklyn last week with the start of the
repeat of penalty phase of his case, which so far is playing out in a mostly
empty courtroom with grim-faced jurors listening to witnesses recounting the
circumstances of the case by rote.
"I asked, 'Why did you do that?'" a cooperating accomplice, Jesse Jacobus,
recalled about a conversation with Wilson after the shootings. "He told me he
didn't give a (expletive) about nobody."
Wilson - once a scrawny street gang member nicknamed Rated R - appears in court
these days wearing glasses and dress shirts appropriate for a college
classroom. But the 31-year-old often looks distant and disengaged, and away
from court he's demonstrated a cynical streak that defies his life-or-death
predicament.
In February, officials revealed that after being transferred from federal death
row in Indiana to a Brooklyn lockup to await the proceedings, Wilson fathered a
child with a jail guard. There's also evidence that while he and Jacobus were
behind bars together, Wilson instructed him to try to win sympathy from the
jury by saying they had a "rough upbringing."
Jacobus, who pleaded guilty, is serving a 15-year to life term that he is
hoping to get reduced by cooperating.
The new set of jurors, though not deciding Wilson's guilt, have once again
heard about the fate of 2 New York Police Department officers who were posing
as illegal gun buyers. The pair met with Wilson for what they thought was a
deal to buy a Tec-9 submachine gun. But Wilson decided to rob them instead and
ended up shooting both in the head as one pleaded for his life.
Once again in evidence is a scrap of paper Wilson was carrying when he was
arrested. It had the rap lyrics saying that if he was ever crossed, he would
put "45 slogs in da back of ya head" and "I ain't goin stop to Im dead."
Wilson, "to impress members of his gang, to raise his status, blasted
hollow-point bullets into their brains," prosecutor James McGovern said this
week in opening statements. "They deserved a life. Now if justice is to be
done, the defendant does not."
The defense will counter with anecdotal evidence of Wilson's troubled
background as the son of a crack-addicted mother living with a dozen relatives
crammed into an apartment at a crime-infested housing project.
In his opening statement, defense attorney Richard Jasper recounted how during
childhood, Wilson also endured time in a psychiatric hospital, where he told a
worker that he wanted to die.
Deciding his client's fate would be "the most important decision of your entire
life," the lawyer told jurors, saying that letting him die "on God's time and
not man's time" was the best option.
The previous jury found that Wilson should die by lethal injection. He became
the city's 1st federal defendant to receive a death sentence since 1954, when
it was imposed on a bank robber who killed an FBI agent.
But the appeals court reversed the decision, saying that prosecutors violated
Wilson's constitutional rights by telling the jury his decision to go to trial
demonstrated his lack of remorse and refusal to accept responsibility.
After Wilson won his appeal, Judge Nicholas Garaufis cautioned lawyers he had
just presided over a capital case for a mobster where the defense bill was $5
million. It ended with the jury choosing to impose a life sentence.
"If I'm going to spend four months of my career and millions of dollars of
taxpayers' money trying another one of these death penalty cases, I need to
know the attorney general wants to try it," he said.
Questioning whether it was worth pursuing the Wilson case made sense, given the
city's track record in federal death penalty case, said Richard Dieter,
executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center.
"It's hard in New York City to have a jury return a death sentence," Dieter
said. "Judges there often look at that and ask, 'Why would you spend all this
money?'"
Under similar circumstances, the Justice Department has decided not to retry
the penalty phase of capital cases at least 4 times since the federal death
penalty was established in 1988, according to the nonprofit. But, without
explanation, Attorney General Eric Holder authorized the U.S. attorney's office
in Brooklyn to move ahead.
How much that decision will ultimately cost is unknown. A 2008 study found that
the average cost of defending a federal death case is more than $620,000. By
the time the appeals process plays out, that total typically tops $1 million,
Dieter said.
So far in the new proceedings, Wilson's lawyers - who, by law, can be paid up
to $178 an hour - have had him examined by several experts in a failed bid to
have him declared ineligible for the death penalty because he's mentally
disabled. Jury selection lasted 5 weeks. And the penalty phase is projected to
take at least a month.
But under the circumstances, the expense of the proceeding is worth it, said
Michael Palladino, president of the Detectives Endowment Association.
"This particular cop killing is one of the most egregious I've ever seen," the
union official said. "There were 2 victims, and (Wilson) knew exactly what he
was doing. ... I understand the concern about cost, but sometimes you must move
forward with what is right."
(source: Associated Press)
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