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    Quintel Martinez Augustine - North Carolina


    Sgt. Roy Turner





    Summary of Offense:

    Quintel Augustine was found guilty of shooting Sgt. Roy Turner to death on November 29, 2001.

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    Four death row inmates have their cases reviewed

    Four North Carolina death row inmates are scheduled to have their sentences reviewed under the revised Racial Justice Act in a hearing that may reveal the first fallout of the General Assembly's recent rollbacks to the law.

    Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks has scheduled a preliminary hearing Friday morning in Fayetteville. The four convicted murderers are trying to use the law that allows death row prisoners to use statistics to show that racial bias influenced their sentences.

    Tye Hunter, executive director of the Durham-based Center for Death Penalty Litigation, said the convicts want to have their sentences reduced to life in prison under the original 2009 Racial Justice Act, not the amended version passed by the General Assembly last month. Assistant Cumberland District Attorney Rob Thompson seeks to have Weeks recused, and declined to comment on the hearing.

    Weeks will examine the cases of Tilmon Golphin, a 34-year-old black man; Quintel Augustine, a 34-year-old black man; Christina Walters, a 33-year-old American Indian woman; and Jeffrey Meyer, a 45-year-old European man. All were convicted of first degree murder in Cumberland County.

    Golphin and his underage brother Kevin were convicted of gunning down two law officers in 1997 after their stolen car was pulled over on Interstate 95. Augustine was part of a group of four who taunted Fayetteville Police Officer Roy Turner Jr., and then shot him in the head and shoulder once he got out of his car. Walters, as part of a gang initiation, abducted and shot three teenage girls in 1998 - killing two of them. Meyer and an accomplice, who dressed in black ninja-garb and were allegedly inspired by the tabletop game "Dungeons and Dragons," killed an elderly couple in 1986 with a blowgun and knives.

    Their sentences have been in limbo during the past three years while lawmakers went back and forth on how to address race in the courtroom.

    Lawmakers this year rolled back the 2009 act. Governor Beverly Perdue vetoed the bill after a public outcry, but the Republican-led House overrode the veto.

    Nearly all of North Carolina's 150-plus death row inmates filed for reviews after the 2009 act passed. Proponents of the rollback said the recent amendments were needed to keep the state's courts from being bogged down. The amended law puts a time limit on applicable statistics and restricts data to the geographical area near where the crime was committed. The bill also said statistics alone cannot prove race was a factor- a restriction some say makes such proof nearly impossible.

    The freshly amended law makes it clear how to handle future death penalty cases, but what will happen to the approximately 150 inmates who appealed under the old law is unknown. The new law provides 60 days for inmates to revise their appeals to comply with the amendments, but it is not clear if the original appeals are still valid.

    "It definitely kind of murkies the water in that you've had a lot of change, and to some extent it's up in the air," said Hunter, who is helping represent the four convicts. "It is certainly going to cause a lot more litigation."

    The original appeals, Hunter said, will likely take years to move through state courts. He said they might be appealed all the way to the state Supreme Court and through federal courts as well. The four convicts up for review Friday are the beginning of that process, Hunter said.

    "It's not as straightforward as some people have assumed," Hunter said.

    It's no coincidence that the case is in Weeks' court. Hunter said the testing of the new law was chosen for Cumberland County because of Weeks' prior experience with the Racial Justice Act.

    In the first and only case under the 2009 Racial Justice Act, Weeks ruled that condemned killer Marcus Robinson's 1991 trial was racially influenced to the point where Robinson should be removed from death row.

    Robinson is a black man convicted of killing a white teenager in 1991 and was almost executed in 2007. Weeks said he found highly reliable a study by two Michigan State University law professors who analyzed the influence of race in the North Carolina judicial system. They found prosecutors eliminated black jurors more than twice as often as white jurors and that a defendant is nearly three times more likely to be sentenced to death if at least one of the victims is white.

    http://www2.nbc17.com/news/2012/jul/...ed-ar-2410408/
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    October hearings in NC Racial Justice Act cases

    Hearings have been scheduled to determine whether three people convicted of Fayetteville-area killings can be taken off North Carolina's death row under the Racial Justice Act.

    The Fayetteville Observer reports that Cumberland County Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks denied prosecutors' requests to delay the hearings, which are set to begin October 1.

    The inmates are seeking to have their death sentences lessened to life in prison under the Racial Justice Act, which allows appeals if racial bias during the trial is proved.

    They are Tilmon Golphin, a 34-year-old black man; Quintel Augustine, a 34-year-old black man; and Christina Walters, a 33-year-old American Indian woman.

    Earlier this year, Marcus Reymond Robinson of Fayetteville became the first prisoner to be removed from death row under the law.

    http://www.wwaytv3.com/2012/09/03/oc...tice-act-cases
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    Attorneys Give Opening Statements In Racial Justice Act Appeal For Death Row Inmates

    Defense attorneys say race was a significant factor in the death sentences given to two black men and one American Indian woman convicted of murder.

    The three are using the Racial Justice Act to try to get their death sentences reduced to life in prison. The act allows that reduction if it can be shown racial bias was a factor in a death sentence.

    Attorney James Ferguson said Monday in Cumberland County court that statistics, history, anecdotes and trial records will show bias. Prosecutor Rob Thompson argued that the jury selections had no racial bias and that a lead prosecutor from the time led anti-racism training in the Air Force.

    The inmates are Tilmon Golphin, Quintel Augustine and Christina Walters.

    http://www.witn.com/home/headlines/A...172179661.html
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    NC Supreme Court to hear more racial bias cases

    North Carolina's Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal of state attorneys who disagree with a trial court that reduced death sentences of three convicted killers to life in prison because of racial bias.

    The justices announced Friday they had accepted a petition by the state Attorney General's Office in the Racial Justice Act cases of Christina "Queen" Walters, Tilmon Golphin and Quintel Augustine.

    A Superior Court Judge last December ruled race had played unjust roles in jury selection at their trials. Golphin and Augustine were convicted of killing law enforcement officers. Walters was convicted of killing two women.

    The justices already have taken briefs in an earlier Racial Justice Act case in which another death-row inmate received life in prison.

    The legislature repealed the act this year.

    http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/...APN/1310040838
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    Senior Member Frequent Poster elsie's Avatar
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    If I remember correctly the Judge was black also. This was the clearest bias Judge I have ever heard of in my life. Hopefully this decision will be over turned by people who have more sense then he did.

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    NC judge to rule on racial bias from old trials

    A North Carolina judge is expected to rule on petitions from three death-row inmates who allege racial bias played a role in their sentences.

    Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks is scheduled to announce Thursday whether he will commute the sentences of the three convicted murderers under the state's Racial Justice Act from death to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    Lawyers for Christina "Queen" Walters, Tilmon Golphin and Quintel Augustine argued at a hearing in October that statistics and handwritten notes from prosecutors show racial bias in jury selection.

    Earlier this year, an inmate became the first to have his sentence commuted to life without parole under the provisions of the 2009 law, which Republicans in the state legislature have sought to repeal since its approval.

    http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?se...cal&id=8918667
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    Judge rules on racial bias from old trials

    A North Carolina judge has ruled in favor of three death-row inmates who alleged racial bias played a role in their sentences.

    Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks announced Thursday that he will commute the sentences of the three convicted murderers under the state's Racial Justice Act from death to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    Lawyers for Christina "Queen" Walters, Tilmon Golphin and Quintel Augustine argued at a hearing in October that statistics and handwritten notes from prosecutors show racial bias in jury selection.

    Earlier this year, an inmate became the first to have his sentence commuted to life without parole under the provisions of the 2009 law, which Republicans in the state legislature have sought to repeal since its approval.

    http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?se...cal&id=8918667
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    N.C. Supreme Court to take up death row appeals

    Of the four inmates, three of them are black men and the other, a Lumbee Indian woman.

    Two of the men are convicted cop killers. The third shot to death a teenage boy who gave him a ride. The woman led the execution-style murders of two innocent victims.

    All four were sentenced to die by Cumberland County juries. And all of them have had their death sentences commuted to life in prison without parole under the since-repealed N.C. Racial Justice Act.

    Monday, the state Supreme Court will hear arguments about whether a Cumberland County judge made the right decision when he ruled that their cases were tainted by racism and removed them from death row.

    The murderers are Marcus Robinson, Quintel Augustine, Christina Walters, and Tilmon Golphin. These defendants were the first - and so far only - death row inmates in North Carolina to present evidence to a judge under the Racial Justice Act.

    A decision in the case could take months. But the justices' questions Monday may telegraph their leanings.

    The four convicted killers convinced Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks in 2012 that there was racial bias in the selection of their juries. As permitted by the Racial Justice Act of 2009, Weeks commuted their sentences, much to the dismay of the victims' relatives, law enforcement and others.

    In the wake of the decisions, the state Legislature repealed the act as part of a bill intended to push the state to resume executions. No death sentences have been carried out in North Carolina since 2006, chiefly because of an unofficial moratorium in place while officials debated the procedures used to kill the condemned.

    Institutional racism

    Supporters of the Racial Justice Act said Weeks' decisions were a remedy for the state's history of institutional racism. Statistical evidence presented at hearings in the cases suggested that prosecutors improperly blocked African-Americans from serving on the juries in the four cases.

    The killers' lawyers said they did this on the premise black jurors are less likely than white jurors to convict and issue death sentences than black jurors.

    For example, in Robinson's trial in the robbery-murder of teenager Erik Tornblom in 1994, the prosecutor refused to sit five of 10 black potential jurors but turned down only four out of 28 whites, a study found.

    This study found that in Cumberland County from 1990 to 2010, prosecutors in 11 capital trials used peremptory strikes to keep blacks off juries just over half the time, but whites just about 20 percent of the time. Peremptory strikes, which can be used by both prosecutors and defense lawyers, allow the dismissal of a juror without an announced reason.

    It is illegal under a under a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Batson vs. Kentucky, to consider race when deciding whether to seat a potential juror.

    Defense lawyers at the Racial Justice Act hearings alleged that prosecutors continued to use race in their decision-making despite the Batson ruling but masked their intentions from judges and opposing counsel.

    The defendants' lawyers produced documentation from a training program for prosecutors. They said prosecutors were taught things to say when they wanted to remove a potential juror from a trial and avoid being accused of doing so illegally because of the juror's race.

    Legal arguments

    Cumberland County Assistant District Attorney Rob Thompson will argue the Robinson case. He says in court papers that Weeks made numerous mistakes.

    Statistics alone should not have been sufficient to make a case of racism, Thompson said, and Robinson should have been required to prove intentional discrimination.

    If Weeks' ruling is allowed to stand, prosecutors will never be able to rebuff a Racial Justice Act allegation, Thompson said. "The results will be an unrealistic and unachievable standard of constitutionally sound jury selection in capital cases going forward. This the Legislature did not intend with the passage of the RJA," he wrote.

    Thompson also challenged the reliability of the study that produced the statistics indicating there was racial bias in jury selection. The study looked at peremptory challenges in 166 death penalty cases statewide, including the 11 in Cumberland County.

    A state deputy attorney general made similar arguments in regard to the decision on the sentences of Walters, Golphin and Augustine. Robinson's case was heard in one hearing; the other three were combined in a second hearing - all before Judge Weeks.

    Lawyer Mark Rabil, director of the Innocence and Justice Clinic at the Wake Forest School of Law, thinks that the prosecutors will have a difficult time at the Supreme Court knocking both Robinson's ruling and the Golphin, Walters and Augustine ruling.

    "Basically, the summary is, in the first case, they don't like being bound by statistical studies of what other DAs have done around the state," Rabil said. "They just don't like it. They don't think it's fair."

    But, Rabil said, the statute as passed permitted the use of statistical evidence, and Weeks applied the law as written.

    Rabil has been observing the issue but is not involved in the cases.

    The Golphin, Walters and Augustine cases provoked outrage, especially in the ranks of law enforcement. Tilmon Golphin took part in the shooting deaths of a sheriff's deputy and a highway patrolman. Augustine was convicted of shooting a police officer.

    But Rabil said Weeks' ruling likely will stand, Rabil said, because the judge found evidence of racial discrimination and applied both the 2009 law and a revised, stricter 2012 version of the law to their cases.

    Weeks 210-page ruling says a prosecutor kept a "cheat sheet" of legally acceptable excuses for peremptorily striking black jurors to mask bias.

    While the prosecutors are questioning the evidence that Weeks cited, Rabil thinks it is unlikely that the Supreme Court would do so.

    "They should take the facts as the judge found them, unless there was some gross abuse," he said, such as findings that differ greatly from what is presented in a transcript of the hearings.

    "I think the state at this point in all the cases is bound by the factual findings. So when the judge said there's statistical patterns of disparity over a long period of time, then that's what it is."

    http://www.fayobserver.com/news/crim...ec28b5eb8.html
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    N.C. Supreme Court justices hear arguments about Racial Justice Act used in Fayetteville cases

    By Paul Woolverton
    The Fayetteville Observer

    RALEIGH - A state attorney at the N.C. Supreme Court on Monday accused Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Gregory Weeks of having a "misapprehension of law" when he decided in 2012 to commute the sentences of four death row inmates to life in prison under the N.C. Racial Justice Act.

    Two lawyers for the four inmates argued that Weeks made the right call when he found that racial discrimination tainted the jury selection in the four killers' cases.

    "We see that the evidence shows a culture of a pervasive and preoccupation and reliance upon race by the Cumberland County prosecutors," defense lawyer Jay Ferguson said during oral arguments before the court.

    The case drew about 100 spectators to the Supreme Court's chamber; others observed via a feed to an overflow room. The audience included state troopers - one of the killers murdered Trooper Ed Lowry - Lowry's brother-in-law Jim Davis and the parents of slain Fayetteville Police Officer Roy Turner Jr.

    Cumberland County prosecutors and advocates for repeal of the death penalty also attended.

    The justices asked few questions today, and those that were asked tended to be about the facts.

    The state Supreme Court is expected to take months to decide whether Weeks correctly applied the controversial Racial Justice Act in their cases. If they say he was wrong, the inmates will go back to death row.

    The Racial Justice Act of 2009 was a law that gave death row inmates a chance to argue in court that racism influenced their trials. If they could persuade a judge that they were right, the judge would convert their sentences to life in prison without parole.

    By the end of 2011, there were 159 pending claims filed by inmates of all races.

    Marcus Reymond Robinson of Cumberland County in early 2012 was the first to get a hearing. He killed a teen in a 1991 robbery.

    After Weeks commuted Robinson's death sentence based on statistical evidence of racism, the state legislature in summer 2012 amended the Racial Justice Act to require other evidence in addition to statistics to prove a claim. It also narrowed the scope of acceptable statistics that could be used.

    In late 2012, Weeks used both the 2009 edition of the law and the 2012 edition to commute the death sentences of Quintel Augustine, Christina "Queen" Walters and Tilmon Golphin.

    Augustine had been convicted of killing Turner, the Fayetteville police officer. Walters led a gang that kidnapped three people at random and killed two of them. Golphin killed Lowry and a Cumberland County deputy in a traffic stop.

    All four inmates used a section of the Racial Justice Act that said if they could prove that prosecutors considered the race of potential jurors when deciding whether to exclude them from a trial, then they could win their Racial Justice Act claims.

    Lawyers for the four defendants persuaded Weeks that prosecutors had a practice of illegally using their peremptory challenges to prevent black citizens from serving on juries.

    Weeks, in Robinson's case, cited statistics that suggested there was racial discrimination in jury selection in trials statewide and locally. He also concluded that blacks were wrongly excluded by the prosecution from serving on Robinson's jury.

    But today Special Deputy Attorney General Danielle Marquis Elder argued that Weeks made a mistake. His ruling allows a person to come off death row based on racism in other people's cases, even if there is no evidence of racial discrimination in his own case, she said.

    "That is simply not what the legislature could have intended, because it gives an absurd result," she said.

    Elder said Weeks also was wrong "to find that statistical disparities in jury selection was sufficient to establish a racial justice claim."

    "And that was the predominate part of this lower court's ruling, was the statistical disparities," Elder said.

    Robinson's lawyer, Donald H. Beskind, disagrees and said Elder has it wrong.

    "We are here today because the prosecutor in Mr. Robinson's trial chose to strike 50 percent of the black jurors who were qualified for jury service, and only 14 percent of the non-black jurors," Beskind said. "By 'qualified jurors,' I'm referring to jurors who have passed challenges for cause."

    A black juror was 3.5 times more likely to be struck from Robinson's trial than a non-black juror, Beskind said. "This was not a random event. It did not happen by chance."

    The Justice Act claim of Walters, Augustine and Golphin were conducted before Weeks in late 2012. The judge was biased, Elder told the Supreme Court, before the case even began.

    "First and foremost, the lower court erroneously concluded that its previous findings of fact in the Robinson order precluded any litigation of the issues in the instant case," she said. "So the lower court had already determined that racial discrimination existed in these three cases before any evidence was accepted at the evidentiary hearing."

    Weeks had plenty of evidence of racial bias beyond the statistics shown in Robinson's case, countered defendant lawyer Jay Ferguson. He represents Walters, Augustine and Golphin.

    "In fact, the lower court ... said that its findings were primarily based, not upon statistics, but primarily based on the words and deeds of the prosecutors themselves," Ferguson said.

    A prosecutor's notes from jury selection noted which potential jurors were black, Ferguson said.

    When another prosecutor was accused during a trial of using race to dismiss a black juror, she cited the defendant's age - which is considered an acceptable reason - Ferguson said. Yet the judge pointed out that she accepted a white juror who was born the exact same day, Ferguson said.

    Among the follow-up questions, Associate Justice Robin Hudson questioned Elder on whether the 2009 edition of the law should be interpreted to rely on statistics.

    Associate Justice Barbara Jackson suggested in a question that the prosecutor's notes listing the race of potential jurors were intended to be descriptive and simply reflected what he was told.

    Associate Justice Cheri Beasley, formerly of Fayetteville, did not participate in the portion of the arguments covering Golphin, Walters and Augustine's cases. She said she has a conflict of interest. She served as Golphin's lawyer in 1998.

    After the arguments concluded, the parents of Turner, the slain police officer, declined comment.

    Davis, Lowry's brother-in-law, said the arguments sounded much like what he heard at the Racial Justice Act hearing in 2012.

    Cumberland County prosecutor Rob Thompson, who presented the state's case to Weeks in 2012, wouldn't comment on the substance of what he heard in the arguments, but praised the state's presentation. Elder and the state Attorney General's office "did a fantastic job. I can say that without reservation," he said.

    Ferguson is hopeful that the inmates will win.

    "We are cautiously optimistic," he said.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/news/loca...7aa74204e.html

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