September 5, 2010
Delaware courts: Attorney claims bias in death sentences
Lawyer: In all cases victim is white female
An attorney for a man facing trial and a possible death sentence alleges that Delaware prosecutors seek the death penalty only in cases where a white woman is the victim.
Attorney Patrick J. Collins claims that Delaware prosecution of death-penalty cases is therefore unconstitutional and the death penalty should be barred in the case of his client, Jamie Beltran, who is accused of killing Wanda Carr, a white woman, during a 2009 home invasion. Beltran's trial is scheduled to begin Wednesday.
In court papers, Collins charges that in 29 first-degree murder cases since 2006, involving 45 defendants, the only one where the death penalty was pursued through to trial by state prosecutors involved a white female victim.
And of three past cases and two pending cases in New Castle County Superior Court -- where the victim was a white woman -- prosecutors are actively seeking the death penalty in three of them -- or in 60 percent of such cases.
"When the victim is a black male, the state proceeds as a capital case zero percent of the time [in 19 cases]," wrote Collins. "In fact when the victim is anyone other than a white female, the capital trial rate is zero."
In a response to Collins filed Friday, prosecutors denied the allegations "in the strongest terms permissible."
Deputy Attorney General Ipek K. Medford wrote that Collins' analysis was both flawed, unfocused and "at best, misguided and unfair."
She also charged that the motion is premature because Beltran has not been found guilty and has not been exposed to or sentenced to the death penalty.
Beltran, 20, along with Christian Cortes, 19, is accused of killing 57-year-old Carr during an Aug. 3, 2009, home invasion, where the pair were allegedly looking to steal an AK-47 they believed was hidden in Carr's South Jackson Street home.
Cortes is being tried separately in November.
Judge Calvin L. Scott Jr. is considering the merits of Collins' argument.
"Simply stated, it is an inescapable fact that for the past two years, if not longer, the state has based its decisions as to whether to seek the death penalty on a constitutionally impermissible criterion: the race and gender of the victim," Collins wrote in his motion.
Collins also cites a draft of a Cornell University Law School study that determined, as of 2008, that 70 percent of all death sentences imposed in Delaware involve cases where the victim is white, though the majority of murder victims in the state are black.
Prosecutors responded that Collins' analysis mixed cases that were not eligible for the death penalty along with cases that were eligible, making his conclusions "completely unscientific and unreliable."
Medford also dismisses the Cornell study as irrelevant to the issue of how prosecutors choose to seek the death penalty because the study itself only looks at outcomes, not how prosecutors choose which cases are tried as capital.
"Beltran committed a crime for which the United States Constitution and the Delaware law permit imposition of the death penalty," Medford wrote. "If he is convicted, Beltran will have been found guilty of burglarizing the home of a wholly innocent victim at night, and for intentionally or recklessly murdering her in cold blood during the commission of the crime."
It is not known whether Scott will rule before jury selection in Beltran's case begins on Wednesday or reserve ruling on the motion until after the trial.
http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20100905/NEWS01/9050358/1006/NEWS
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