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Thread: Marcus Reymond Robinson - North Carolina

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    Marcus Reymond Robinson - North Carolina


    Erik Tornblom




    Summary of Offense:

    Robinson was sentenced to death in Cumberland County Superior Court for the June 1991 death of Erik Tornblom. He also was sentenced to 40 years in prison for robbery with a dangerous weapon, 10 years for larceny and five years for possessing a weapon of mass destruction.

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    Fayetteville man's death row hearing is first under the Racial Justice Act

    A death row inmate from Fayetteville is set to be the first in North Carolina to argue to a judge that his sentence should be converted to life without parole under the controversial Racial Justice Act.

    Marcus Reymond Robinson, convicted in 1994 of killing a teenager during a robbery, will present statistics to a Cumberland County Superior Court judge in an effort to show an ongoing record of racism in decisions that lead to death sentences.

    The Racial Justice Act of 2009 says that a death row inmate who has evidence that his sentence was racially motivated can seek to have it converted to life in prison. Nearly everyone on death row in North Carolina - 151 out of 158 convicts - is pursuing Racial Justice Act claims. Robinson is the first to have a hearing date set before a judge, according to the nonprofit Center for Death Penalty Litigation, which is representing him.

    Robinson's lawyers will argue that he got the death penalty partly because he is a black man who killed a white victim. They will say that follows a pattern in Cumberland County, along with how juries are picked and in which cases prosecutors decide to seek capital punishment.

    Prosecutors have filed motions arguing that the statistics are incomplete and that Robinson raised no claim of discrimination during or after his trial.

    Gregory Weeks, a senior resident Superior Court judge, is scheduled to hear the arguments Sept. 6.

    Gerda Stein, a spokeswoman for the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, said many judges have been wary of hearing Racial Justice Act cases because it's possible the Republican-controlled legislature could repeal the law next year. Weeks just happens to be the first judge to schedule a hearing, she said.

    Robinson was convicted for the 1991 robbery and murder of 17-year-old Eric Tornblom. The teen was on his way home from work when he met Robinson and Roderick Sylvester Williams Jr. at a convenience store. Williams talked the victim into giving the pair a ride. They then used a sawed-off shotgun to force Tornblom to drive to a field between Legion and Camden roads, where they made him lie on the ground and shot him in the face. They stole his car and $27.

    Williams is serving a life sentence for the murder and robbery.

    Robinson was set to die in January 2007, but all executions in the state were postponed indefinitely while the courts sorted out other controversies about North Carolina's execution procedures.
    Race factor

    In Robinson's motion, his lawyers say that prosecutors offered evidence that Robinson told someone he was going to "kill himself a whitey," and that made race a factor in the case.

    His lawyers will point to statistics to say that prosecutors in North Carolina reject minorities for juries in capital cases at twice the rate that they reject whites. The lawyers also say "individuals who kill whites are punished much more harshly than those who kill blacks or other racial minorities," according to their court paperwork.

    In Robinson's case, the prosecutors rejected half the potential jurors who were black but only 15 percent of potential jurors who were other races, the motion says.

    Ultimately, Robinson's jury had nine whites, one American Indian and two blacks, plus two white alternates.

    "Moreover, racial minority defendants accused of capital crimes in Cumberland County face significantly higher odds of receiving a death sentence than white defendants," the lawyers say in their motion.

    They cite several studies that examined the death penalty in North Carolina and locally. They say these studies show racism permeates the system in deciding who gets sentenced to death.

    One study found that between 1990 and 2009 in North Carolina, a defendant who killed a white person was 2.6 times more likely to be sentenced to death than if there were no white victims in the crime, the motion says.

    The lawyers also say that in death penalty-eligible murder cases since 1990, if at least one victim was white, Cumberland County prosecutors pursued the death sentence at more than triple the rate than for cases in which no victims were white.

    And defendants were 3.4 times more likely to be sentenced to death if the victim was white, the motion says.

    Prosecutors disagree with the validity of the statistics cited. Their motion claims Robinson's lawyers used numbers from two studies, one of which is incomplete with its own creators admitting in an affidavit the results were "initial findings."

    The prosecutors' motion argues they have not been given the opportunity to scrutinize the statistical analyses and raw data from either study.

    The Racial Justice Act passed the legislature when it was controlled by Democrats. Most Democrats favored the law, while Republicans voted against it.

    Republicans in control of the General Assembly this year advanced legislation to repeal the act, but the bill is not expected to be considered until at least May 2012.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/...10294?sac=Home

  3. #3
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    Didn't this guy have a date before all the lethal injection troubles?
    He better hope this works cause otherwise he'll be first in the queue once that issue is sorted!

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    Lawyers make racial claims in death row case

    Attorneys for a North Carolina death row inmate are making their case that race played a role at his trial, an argument permitted under a state law that took effect two years ago.

    Defense attorneys said they expect to present evidence at a hearing Tuesday in Fayetteville, making the claims under the state's Racial Justice Act. They say prosecutors discriminated against qualified black jurors in the 1994 trial of Marcus Robinson, who is black.

    Robinson was convicted for the 1991 shooting death of 17-year-old Erik Tornblom, who was white.

    Prosecutors said at a 2007 clemency hearing that Robinson committed murder out of "absolute meanness." Defense lawyers said their client has a mental defect caused by beatings from his father as a child that hinders his ability to control impulses.

    http://www.jdnews.com/news/case-9470...al-claims.html

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    Administrator Michael's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JLR View Post
    Didn't this guy have a date before all the lethal injection troubles?
    Correct - January 26, 2007.

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    Cumberland prosecutors want Judge Weeks off Racial Justice Act case

    Cumberland County prosecutors want a judge to bow out of a case involving a Fayetteville man seeking to get off death row under the new N.C. Racial Justice Act.

    The prosecutors say Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks could be called as a state's witness against the murderer. A judge cannot be a witness in a case that he is overseeing.

    The prosecutors want to postpone the proceedings so they can have more time to prepare their effort to keep killer Marcus Reymond Robinson on death row.

    Robinson is attempting to use the Racial Justice Act to overturn his conviction on the premise that the Cumberland County court system is more prone to sentence people to death for killing a white person than a person of another race.

    The prosecutors have subpoenaed Weeks to testify at a hearing next week. Weeks is fighting the effort. A hearing on the subpoena is scheduled for Thursday morning in Nash County Superior Court. Weeks asked for a judge outside of Cumberland County to handle the hearing.

    Robinson's is early case

    Robinson's is one of the first cases to go forward under the Racial Justice Act, which provides condemned inmates a means to get off death row, though not out of prison, if they can prove racial bias led to their death sentences.

    In letters dated Sept. 14 and Sept. 21, Assistant District Attorneys Cal Colyer and Rob Thompson told Weeks that he presided over murder cases that were included in a study of race and the death penalty in North Carolina. The statewide study found that in Cumberland and other counties, a person of another race who murders a white person is more likely to be sentenced to death. The study is a key piece of evidence that Robinson's lawyers are using to show a pattern of racial bias in Cumberland County courts.

    The prosecutors say several other judges have been removed from trials involving the Racial Justice Act because they presided over cases that were included in the study and could have been called as witnesses.

    The prosecutors also argue that Weeks has personal knowledge of capital cases in Cumberland County that they could use to fight Robinson's claim.

    They described Weeks as "one of the most critical 'potential witnesses' for the state."

    Weeks has previously praised Colyer for his honesty and integrity, the letter says, and the prosecutors say they should be allowed to have him testify.

    Lawyers for Robinson oppose the effort to take Weeks off the case. They say other judges were taken off Racial Justice Act cases because they previously had served as prosecutors, not because they were judges in capital cases.

    In a news release issued Tuesday, Robinson's lawyers say the effort to subpoena Weeks and push him off the case appears to be racially motivated. Weeks is black.

    "In my many years as an attorney, I have never seen a party use such a flimsy pretext to try to get rid of a judge," Duke University law professor James E. Coleman said in the statement. "There is a written record of what the prosecutors did in each of the cases in which their conduct is at issue. Calling the judge as a witness would add nothing to that record. And the idea that they may call the judge as a character witness is absurd; it seems designed only to create a bogus conflict for Judge Weeks."

    Others subpoenaed

    In addition to subpoenaing Weeks, Colyer and Thompson have subpoenaed Superior Court Judge Thomas Lock, retired Cumberland County District Attorney Ed Grannis, District Court Judge John Dickson, who is a former Cumberland County prosecutor, and retired Superior Court judges Jack Thompson, E. Lynn Johnson, Knox V. Jenkins and Coy Brewer.

    Robinson's hearing is scheduled to begin Tuesday. Colyer and Thompson have asked for a delay. They say they and their expert witness need more time to review 50,000 pages of records from the death penalty study that they received from Robinson's lawyers at the end of September.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/...5934?sac=Local

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    Judge can stay on NC's 1st Racial Justice Act case

    FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. -- A Superior Court judge has refused to remove a black judge from presiding over the first case being heard under a North Carolina law that allows death row prisoners to challenge their sentences on the grounds of racial bias.

    The Fayetteville Observer reports (http://bit.ly/u1VFpL) that Judge Quentin Sumner rejected a request Thursday from prosecutors to replace Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks.

    Summer ruled prosecutors didn't show prove that Weeks had significant information in the case to be a witness. Prosecutors wanted Weeks to be a witness because he handled two Cumberland County cases that were part of a study into racial bias in North Carolina death penalty cases.

    The decision clears Weeks to hear the case of Marcus Robinson, who's challenging his death sentence under the state's Racial Justice Act.

    http://www.thesunnews.com/2011/11/10...#ixzz1dKasKFct

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    Hearing for death row inmate under NC Racial Justice Act delayed until January

    A hearing for a Fayetteville man trying to get off death row on the grounds of racial bias has been postponed until January.

    The hearing for Marcus Robinson had been scheduled to begin Tuesday. At a hearing Thursday in Nashville, Nash County Superior Court Judge Quentin Sumner granted prosecutors' request to delay the next evidentiary hearing to Jan. 30.

    Robinson is trying to use the North Carolina Racial Justice Act to prove that racism led to his death sentence in 1994. If he wins his claim, his sentence will be converted to life in prison. Robinson's attorneys say prosecutors discriminated against qualified black jurors at his 1994 trial for killing a white teenager.

    Robinson kidnapped, robbed and murdered 17-year-old Erik Tornblom in 1991.

    http://www.therepublic.com/view/stor...tice-Robinson/

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    Judge rules to hear testimony in Racial Justice Act appeal

    Lawyers continued their opening skirmishes in Cumberland County Superior Court on Friday on whether convicted murderer Marcus Reymond Robinson of Fayetteville should be taken off death row because of racial bias in the court system.

    Prosecutors and defense lawyers argued before Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks over whether current and former judges may take the stand to testify about allegations of racism in trials. They argued over whether a national expert on racism in the judicial process should be allowed to testify.

    They also discussed how to handle errors in a study of race in the court system.

    Robinson's claim is scheduled to be heard starting Jan. 30. If it goes forward, it will be the first in the state to be considered on its merits under the controversial Racial Justice Act.

    This law, enacted in 2009, allows convicted killers on death row to use statistics to try to prove the criminal justice system is racially biased. The legislature tried last year to repeal the law, prompted by law enforcement complaints that it is clogging up the court system and is being used to try to end the death penalty in North Carolina.

    If a killer were to win a Racial Justice Act claim, the law says his death sentence would be converted to life with no possibility of parole.

    Regardless of specific language in the Racial Justice Act that specifies the killers can't get paroled, North Carolina prosecutors contend previous court rulings will give some of these killers a chance to be paroled or otherwise released. They say crimes committed before late 1994 are subject to older sentencing laws that offer prisoners with life sentences a chance for freedom. The prosecutors' theory has not yet been tested before a judge.

    Robinson, whose crime was subject to the older laws, is on death row for killing 17-year-old Erik Tornblom during a 1991 robbery in Fayetteville. Robinson is black; his victim was white.

    A recent study contends North Carolina's court system is more likely to sentence a defendant of any race to death if his victim is white than if his victim is of another race. Most of the state's 158 death row defendants, regardless of race, are pursuing Racial Justice Act claims.

    The arguments

    Prosecutors Cal Colyer and Rob Thompson said they have learned of several errors in the defense team's study that says race is a factor in death sentences. The defense team wants to submit the corrected data.

    Weeks agreed to permit the original and corrected data to be presented.

    In an interview later, defense lawyer Tye Hunter said that out of a review of 7,600 jurors and potential jurors, 11 mistakes have been found in the data of their race (some whites were listed as black, and vice versa, for example). That's too few to alter the overall results of the study, Hunter said.

    Colyer and Thompson may ask six sitting or retired judges to testify on whether they observed racism in Cumberland County capital murder trials, according to court documents. Robinson's four defense lawyers said in court papers that under the law, the judges should not be allowed to testify.

    Instead, the court can rely on transcripts of the trials, defense lawyer Hunter said.

    Weeks said he could allow the judges' testimony and decide later whether it is appropriate for him to consider it when making a decision on Robinson's claim.

    Colyer and Thompson wanted Weeks to keep a proposed defense witness, Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative in Alabama, from testifying. Stevenson has studied racism in the court system in other states, but not in North Carolina, they argued.

    Defense lawyer Cassandra Stubbs argued that Stevenson has reviewed North Carolina cases and he would give his opinion about race in North Carolina and jury selection.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/...0301?sac=Local

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. (AP) - Lawyers for a killer on North Carolina's death row are the first to try persuading a judge that race played a key role in his case. Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks in Fayetteville is setting aside up to two weeks to hear the case of Marcus Robinson beginning today.

    http://www.foxcarolina.com/story/166...sociated-press

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