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Thread: Thomas Michael Larry - North Carolina Death Row

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    Thomas Michael Larry - North Carolina Death Row




    Facts of the Crime:

    Was found guilty of robbery with a firearm and of the first-degree murder of Robert Buitrago, a retired police-officer. On January 15, 1994, at approximately 9:30 p.m., Larry robbed a Food Lion grocery store in Winston-Salem. Larry shot Buitrago during a struggle after Buitrago chased Larry as he left the shop.

    Larry has exhausted his appeals and was denied certiorari by the US Supreme Court on October 13, 2009.

  2. #2
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    (It appears Larry filed another appeal last year but I can't access the article to post it as I'm from Europe. If one of the admins can post the article from the link and delete this, it would be appreciated )

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.jou...cbdf7.amp.html

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    JLR's post

    August 24, 2019

    Death row inmate convicted of killing a Winston-Salem police officer claims racial discrimination in case

    By Michael Hewlett
    The Winston-Salem Journal

    Only one black woman was called in the jury box for a black Winston-Salem man’s murder trial in 1995, his attorneys said in court papers. But Forsyth County prosecutors dismissed her, even though she gave virtually the same answers as a white woman who prosecutors approved as a juror, they said.

    Years later, prosecutors couldn’t find a race-neutral reason why the black woman was removed, the attorneys said.

    Attorneys for Thomas Michael Larry, who is on death row for killing a Winston-Salem police officer after robbing a grocery store in 1994, are alleging in court papers filed in July that Forsyth County prosecutors illegally used race to dismiss the black woman, resulting in an all-white jury.

    They said this fits into a pattern of racial discrimination in jury selection in Forsyth County, and that one of the prosecutors was particularly bad about using race to get rid of potential black jurors in death penalty murder trials.

    Larry, now 63, was convicted in 1995 of first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of 23-year-old Robert Buitrago, who had just joined the Winston-Salem police department. According to testimony, Larry robbed a Food Lion on Jan. 15, 1994, and Buitrago, off-duty and unarmed, was a customer standing in line during the robbery. When Larry ran off with more than $1,000 in cash, Buitrago ran after him. He tried to stop Larry by hitting him with a wine bottle. Larry shot Buitrago in the chest, killing him. A Forsyth County jury sentenced him to death.

    Larry has unsuccessfully appealed his conviction in state and federal courts. In 2009, the N.C. General Assembly passed the Racial Justice Act, which allowed death-row inmates to challenge their sentences if they believed racial bias played a significant role in their case. Larry filed an appeal under that law, which was repealed in 2013.

    That appeal in Forsyth Superior Court is still pending, and on July 22, his attorneys, Elizabeth Hambourger and Gretchen Engel, filed an amended complaint based on new evidence that Forsyth County prosecutors used race to dismiss the black woman, Tonya Reynolds, from the jury.

    Forsyth County District Attorney Jim O’Neill did not respond to a message seeking comment. The N.C. Attorney General’s Office is handling Larry’s appeal, and Laura Brewer, a spokeswoman for that office, said she could not comment because of pending litigation.

    Eric Saunders, who died in 2012, and David Spence prosecuted Larry. Spence is now a prosecutor in Carteret, Craven and Pamlico counties. Spence also prosecuted Russell William Tucker, a Winston-Salem man convicted of killing a security guard at Kmart. Hambourger and Mark Pickett have alleged in recent court papers that Spence and another prosecutor used a training document steeped in racist stereotypes to make up non-racial reasons to exclude black jurors in Tucker’s murder trial.

    When reached at his office Tuesday, Spence said he cannot comment on Larry’s appeal because it is pending.

    During the 1995 murder trial, Reynolds was the only black person called into the jury box to face questions on her suitability to be a juror in the death penalty case. Tiffany Robertson, a white woman, was also called into the jury box.

    Hambourger and Engel said the women were both in their 20s, had been victims of crime, knew people in law-enforcement and were pursuing careers designed to help people. Robertson was a nursing student and Reynolds was studying early childhood education. Both women were single without children and attended Forsyth Technical Community College.

    Reynolds told prosecutors that she believed in the death penalty and had no problem recommending the death penalty if Larry was convicted of first-degree murder, Hambourger and Engel said in court papers.

    But in the end, Spence and Saunders used what is known as a peremptory challenge to dismiss Reynolds. Prosecutors and criminal-defense attorneys have a certain number of peremptory challenges where they can remove a potential juror without giving a reason.

    Spence and Saunders, however, had no problems with Robertson. Larry’s defense attorneys ultimately struck Robertson from the jury. One of the alternate jurors was black. Alternate jurors hear the evidence but only participate in deliberations if one of the 12 jurors becomes sick or has to leave for some other reason.

    “The only difference between these two potential jurors is race,” Hambourger and Engel said.

    And prosecutors are not supposed to remove jurors solely because of race. The 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Batson v. Kentucky, established that prohibition. If criminal defense attorneys suspect that prosecutors used race to get rid of a black juror, they can object. And a judge can then ask a prosecutor to provide a race-neutral reason for removing a juror.

    Larry’s trial attorneys did object to Reynolds being dismissed. But Spence and Saunders were not asked to provide a race-neutral reason, according to court papers. The trial judge overruled the objection.

    But during litigation of the Racial Justice Act, Joseph Katz, a statistician, sent letters to prosecutors around North Carolina, asking them to provide affidavits outlining race-neutral reasons for striking more than 600 black jurors in cases cited in a Michigan State University study about racial discrimination in jury selection. One of the jurors was Reynolds.

    Hambourger and Engel said in court papers that then-Forsyth County prosecutor Patrick Weede reviewed the transcript and said in an unsworn affidavit that he could not find a race-neutral reason for striking Reynolds from the jury.

    In fact, Weede said, he couldn’t determine why Reynolds was removed as a juror, court papers said.

    Hambourger and Engel said the fact that prosecutors can’t find a race-neutral reason for getting rid of Reynolds is enough to justify Larry getting a new trial.

    Spence, in particular, has shown racial bias in several other death penalty murder cases. He struck 62.5 percent of black potential jurors but only 21 percent of white potential jurors in four death penalty cases, including Larry’s, the attorneys said.

    And in another case, the N.C. Court of Appeals found that Spence discriminated against black potential jurors. In the case of Henry Jerome White, Spence specifically referenced the race and gender of two black women he dismissed as jurors when challenged. He also said one of the women shouldn’t be a juror because she lived with her mother, meaning she didn’t have a stake in the community.

    Spence also said the fact that she worked in the health-care industry might mean she wouldn’t support the death penalty, according to court papers.

    That reflected a pattern in at least three different cases.

    “Namely, women in their twenties, single people, folks who do not own homes, and health care providers are unacceptable jurors when they are black, but acceptable when they are white,” Hambourger and Engel said.

    In addition, Forsyth County prosecutors have historically dismissed more black jurors than white jurors in death penalty cases, they said.

    Four of the 12 people on death row in Forsyth County were sentenced to death by all-white juries, and Forsyth has more black defendants sentenced to death by all-white juries than any other prosecutorial district in the state, Hambourger and Engel said in court papers.

    A date to hear the amended motion has not been set.

    https://journalnow.com/news/crime/de...0dcdcbdf7.html
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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