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Thread: Tilmon Golphin - North Carolina

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    Tilmon Golphin - North Carolina


    Sergeant Lloyd Edward Lowry, N.C. Highway Patrol



    Kevin Golphin


    Tilmon Golphin


    Summary of Offense:

    Brothers Kevin and Tilmon Golphin gunned down North Carolina Highway Patrol Trooper Ed Lowry and Cumberland County Sheriff's Deputy David Hathcock in 1997 during a traffic stop on Interstate 95. Both were found guilty of murder. And both were sentenced to die. But Kevin Golphin was removed from death row at Raleigh's Central Prison, while Tilmon Golphin remains there — the result of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made it unconstitutional to execute killers who were under 18 when they committed their crimes.

    Note: Golphin has exhausted all his appeals and was denied certiorari by the US Supreme Court on October 20, 2008.

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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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    Lawmen’s killer tries to get death sentence overturned

    The family of slain Highway Patrol Trooper Ed Lowry quietly watched with anger as a phalanx of lawyers on Friday worked to get his killer off death row.

    “It’s just ridiculous in our opinion, and it needs to end,” Dixie Davis Lowry, Lowry’s widow, said during a courtroom break Friday morning.

    One of Ed Lowry’s killers, Tilmon Golphin, is one of four Fayetteville-area murderers whose Racial Justice Act claims had a preliminary hearing Friday in Cumberland County Superior Court. Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks presided.

    The four killers contend that racism was a factor in the decisions to sentence them to death and therefore, under the Racial Justice Act, they should have their sentences converted to life in prison without parole.

    The defendants are Golphin; Jeffery Karl Meyer, who killed an elderly couple in 1986; Quintel Augustine, who killed a police officer in 2001; and Christina S. “Queen” Walters, who killed two women in a gang-initiation ritual in 1998. Golphin and Augustine are black, Walters is American Indian, and Meyer is white.

    None of the defendants attended the hearing.

    Some of the outcomes of Friday’s proceedings:

    • Golphin, Augustine and Walters had their lawyers replaced with Malcolm “Tye” Hunter, Cassandra Stubbs, James Ferguson II and Jay Ferguson. That is the team that successfully used the Racial Justice Act this year to get Marcus Reymond Robinson of Fayetteville removed from death row.

    A hearing to delve into the facts of those three cases was postponed from July 23 to Oct. 1. In part, the delay is because the prosecutors won’t be ready by July 23. But also the legislature on Monday, as part of a revision to the Racial Justice Act law, delayed all RJA evidentiary hearings until Aug. 31.

    • Weeks denied a request from prosecutors Rob Thompson of Cumberland County and Mike Silver of Forsyth County that he recuse himself from presiding over the claims.

    The prosecutors want to call Weeks as a witness on their behalf, along with six other judges, to present evidence there was no racism in these murder cases. Weeks said the request was incorrectly presented and, regardless, another judge has already rejected a similar request for Weeks to remove himself in the Robinson RJA case.

    • Defendant Meyer chose to stay with his legal team, Paul Green and Gordon Widenhouse. His next hearing date has not been determined.

    • The prosecutors said they want to contact law students who helped prepare the Michigan State University study that analyzed North Carolina death penalty convictions and reported evidence of racism in the court system. They contend the students were not qualified to work on the study.

    The prosecutors also are seeking other materials from that study, which was used to persuade Weeks to take Robinson off death row.

    The courtroom arguments revealed that the state has been in talks with Harvard University statistics professor Donald R. Rubin to analyze and refute the Michigan State study.

    According to a document obtained by the defense lawyers, Rubin wants to charge the state $800 per hour for his work, plus $200 for post-doctoral students and lower rates for graduate students.

    • The defense lawyers want the prosecutors to turn over numerous affidavits from other prosecutors across the state. The statements were prepared by the prosecutors in the Robinson case to try to show there was no racism in prosecutors’ work on death penalty cases.

    Weeks plans to review the affidavits and decide whether to share them with the defense lawyers.

    After the Robinson ruling, upset lawmakers on Monday scaled back the means by which a death-row prisoner can advance a Racial Justice Act claim.

    Lawyers for Walters, Golphin and Augustine are seeking to use both the 2009 version of the law and the 2012 version approved Monday. They say they can use the 2009 version because their cases were under way before the law was changed this week.

    Warning from family

    Tilmon Golphin and his brother Kevin killed Trooper Lowry and a Cumberland County sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop on Interstate 95 in 1997. Kevin is serving a life sentence and may qualify for parole under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling issued last month.

    The Lowry family worries that the Golphins could eventually get out of prison.

    “These people are evil. It’s not because of their color – they are evil,” Dixie Davis Lowry said. “If they were pink or purple or white, it would be the same thing. They still did the crime. They still should have justice. We should be ending this a long time ago. They did it. They’re guilty, and that’s all there is to it.”

    “I would love to see him walk out of the gate,” said Jim Davis, Dixie Davis’ brother. “It would be the last step he ever took. Is that clear?”

    “If they turn them loose, the family will take care of business,” said Al Lowry, Ed Lowry’s brother.

    http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/07/...#storylink=cpy
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    Warning from family

    Tilmon Golphin and his brother Kevin killed Trooper Lowry and a Cumberland County sheriff’s deputy during a traffic stop on Interstate 95 in 1997. Kevin is serving a life sentence and may qualify for parole under a U.S. Supreme Court ruling issued last month.

    The Lowry family worries that the Golphins could eventually get out of prison.

    “These people are evil. It’s not because of their color – they are evil,” Dixie Davis Lowry said. “If they were pink or purple or white, it would be the same thing. They still did the crime. They still should have justice. We should be ending this a long time ago. They did it. They’re guilty, and that’s all there is to it.”

    “I would love to see him walk out of the gate,” said Jim Davis, Dixie Davis’ brother. “It would be the last step he ever took. Is that clear?”

    “If they turn them loose, the family will take care of business,” said Al Lowry, Ed Lowry’s brother.

    Wow! I've always thought the RJA was a huge mistake. We are going to see many more articles like this.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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    Hopefully, if North Carolina elects a Republican governor in November, the General Assembly can repeal the RJA altogether.

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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
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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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
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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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
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

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    Judge removes three from death row

    Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks commuted the death sentences of three convicted murderers to life in prison Thursday - saying racial bias played a role in their trials.

    The ruling under North Carolina's controversial Racial Justice Act means the three will spend the rest of their lives in prison without the possibility of parole.

    The three are 34-year-old Tilmon Golphin - who killed a North Carolina State Highway Patrol trooper in 1997, 35-year-old Quintel Augustine - who shot a Fayetteville police officer in 2001, and 34-year-old Christina "Queen" Walters - the leader of a gang who killed two women and shot another in a 1998 gang initiation.

    The Racial Justice Act, passed in 2009 and one of only two such statutes in the nation, allows death row inmates to present evidence that race influenced their sentencing process. Those who win their cases receive life in prison without parole.

    Judge Weeks' ruling Thursday was based on evidence presented over four weeks of hearings.

    Lawyers for the three had argued that statistics and handwritten notes from prosecutors showed racial bias in jury selection.

    "The Court takes hope that acknowledgment of the ugly truth of race discrimination revealed by Defendants' evidence is the first step in creating a system of justice that is free from the pernicious influence of race, a system that truly lives up to our ideal of equal justice under the law," Weeks wrote in his ruling.

    Weeks' decision comes as North Carolina continues to struggle with the fairness of its capital punishment system. No one has been executed in six years because of concerns about the system, and this year, for the first time in 35 years, North Carolina juries did not hand down a single new death sentence.

    Earlier this year, another inmate became the first to have his sentence commuted to life without parole under the provisions of the 2009 law, which legislators made more restrictive this year.

    Responding to the ruling Thursday, North Carolina Highway Patrol Colonel Michael Gilchrist said he was disappointed that the sentences for two convicted of killing law enforcement officers won't be carried out.

    "Law enforcement officers don't make the laws, we support them and enforce them, it's not our place to be critical of them," he offered. "It is important that we support the law enforcement officers who protect us and support their families as well and that's what we are doing."

    http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?se...cal&id=8918667

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