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Thread: North Carolina Racial Justice Act

  1. #111
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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

  2. #112
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    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.
    That's good news. Beasley was appointed by Democratic Governor Purdue, who signed the Racial Justice Act into law. So, that means four Republican judges and only two Democratic judges will be left to decide on all the cases except Robinson's.

  3. #113
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    Racial Justice Act decision pending in Supreme Court

    By Paul Woolverton
    The Fayetteville Observer

    It's been seven months since the state Supreme Court heard arguments on whether four convicted murderers were correctly or wrongly removed from death row based on evidence of racism in North Carolina's criminal justice system.

    And it's been eight years since North Carolina has last carried out an execution.

    The state's method of carrying out the death penalty has been paralyzed in state and federal courts since January 2007.

    People for and against the death penalty and the Racial Justice Act are watching for resolution to both issues.

    On Nov. 10, a judge gave prisoners' lawyers until Dec. 10 to file new paperwork challenging the execution protocols.

    A Supreme Court ruling on the Racial Justice Act, the controversial law that allowed the four inmates to come off death row in 2012, could come as soon as Dec. 12, when it's next expected to publish decisions.

    But there is no certainty to that date.

    It's to be expected that the Supreme Court has yet to rule on the Racial Justice Act cases, said lawyer Ken Rose of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham.

    "It's a very difficult, huge issue for the court that affects a lot of people," Rose said. "And it doesn't surprise me that they're being very deliberative about it."

    Regardless of the Racial Justice Act ruling, executions are unlikely to resume anytime soon, Rose said. The fight in state and federal court over the state's method of execution will remain unresolved. Rose predicted there will be no executions in North Carolina in 2015.

    Local inmates

    The Racial Justice Act of 2009 has been the most-visible death penalty law in North Carolina in the past five years, and often was incorrectly blamed for North Carolina's unofficial moratorium on executions.

    Passed when Democrats controlled state government, the law said death row inmates could ask judges to review their cases to see if racism was a factor in their prosecutions, convictions and death sentences. If a judge found racism to be a significant factor in an inmate's case, he would commute the sentence from death to life in prison without parole.

    In the year after the law passed in August 2009, all but eight of the approximately 155 people on death row at that time sought relief. These included whites as well as black and American Indian defendants.

    One way the inmates attacked their death sentences was to criticize the jury selection of their trials. If they could prove that prosecutors were racist in deciding which jurors were allowed to be seated, the inmates could win commuted sentences.

    It's illegal for a prosecutor to consider the race of a potential juror when deciding whether to strike him from the panel.

    The initial batch of Racial Justice Act claimants alleged that the prosecutors operated on a theory that black jurors were less likely to convict or sentence a person to death than white jurors.

    The first claimant, Marcus Reymond Robinson, had statistical data that said prosecutors struck black potential jurors more often than whites.

    Robinson was on death row for robbing and killing a 17-year-old who had given him a ride in Fayetteville.

    The next three claimants used this data, plus notes made by the prosecutors to make their claims.

    Those three are Christina Walters, who led a gang that kidnapped and shot three women, killing two; Tilmon Golphin, who with his brother killed a deputy and a state trooper; and Quintel Augustine, who was convicted of killing a Fayetteville police officer.

    In spring and fall 2012, Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks commuted the sentences of the four inmates.

    Robinson's case led the legislature in summer 2012, and now controlled by Republicans, to make it harder to use statistical data to prove a Racial Justice Act claim.

    Weeks' decision on the other three claims later that year spurred lawmakers to repeal the entire law in 2013 in an attempt to stop any other inmates from using it.

    It remains in dispute whether the death row inmates who had claims pending when the law was repealed can still use it.

    The Supreme Court heard arguments in the four original cases in April and received hundreds of pages in legal briefs.

    The state Attorney General Office argues that Weeks made numerous mistakes.

    Among them:

    * That Weeks misinterpreted the law.
    * That he was wrong to conclude that the statistics proved there was racism.
    * That he was wrong to conclude that racism was proven in Robinson's case.
    * And that he prevented prosecution witnesses who could have rebutted some of the evidence from testifying.

    The inmates' lawyers contend that the Attorney General's Office is wrong and Weeks was correct in his interpretation and application of the law and the evidence presented.

    When rulings come down, there are several possible outcomes, said Rose, who represents Golphin.

    "Affirm the life sentence, vacate and impose the death sentence, or remand for further consideration and further hearing," Rose said.

    If the cases are remanded, they would return to Cumberland County Superior Court.

    Weeks has retired, so it's not certain which judge would take up the case.

    Deadline nears

    Separately, the court system is evaluating North Carolina's execution methods.

    The dispute arose in January 2007, when Robinson was scheduled to be executed.

    He and several other inmates facing imminent execution persuaded a Wake County Superior Court judge to halt all executions to consider whether North Carolina officials had obeyed state law when they set up the procedures.

    There have been other related challenges over the years that further blocked executions.

    In the meantime, it has become more difficult for states to obtain all three of the drugs that were used to kill the inmates - some drug makers don't want to be associated with capital punishment.

    Frustrated by the delay and impediments, state lawmakers in summer 2013 changed the law on execution protocols in an effort to clear a path to resume executions.

    For example, the law said that a single drug, chosen by the Secretary of the Department of Public Safety, could be used to kill the condemned.

    These changes were in the same bill that repealed the Racial Justice Act.

    "This new legislation will start the dead men walking once again," said state Sen. Thom Goolsby of Wilmington, the bill sponsor, in March 2013.

    State Rep. Paul Stam told the Associated Press that summer that he expected it would be a matter of many months instead of years before executions resumed.

    But instead of spurring executions, the law change instead has given death row inmates more ammunition to delay their dates with the executioner's needle.

    "The General Assembly created a new set of issues, is what I would say," Rose said. "Every time they change it, there's another, a new set of questions that they raise."

    Inmates are challenging the new law and its implementation.

    "That is holding up executions, I would say, for the foreseeable future, certainly through 2015," Rose said.

    On Nov. 10, Wake County Superior Court Judge Donald W. Stephens gave lawyers for the death row defendants until Dec. 10 to file their latest arguments.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/news/loca...14a4d8696.html

  4. #114
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    Supreme Court ruling on death penalty for local cop killers slow in coming

    It's been 18 months since the N.C. Supreme Court heard arguments in the state's controversial Racial Justice Act cases and the court still hasn't issued issued a decision.

    Most cases don't take that long, said former Associate Justice Ed Brady of Fayetteville. He strove to get court opinions finished in three to six months, he said.

    The other four cases that the state Supreme Court heard in April 2014 were all decided before the end of that year. The Racial Justice Act rulings may be put off until next year because the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a similar matter, a death penalty lawyer said.

    In the meantime, the four defendants in the Racial Justice Act cases - each convicted in some of the Fayetteville area's highest-profile murders - and the families of their victims are waiting to hear whether the defendants will be sent back to death row. The defendants used the act in 2011 and 2012 to persuade a judge to commute their death sentences to life in prison without parole.

    Also, unrelated to the Racial Justice Act, the court system is still reviewing the legality and constitutionality of the state's death penalty practices. Executions in this state have been in hiatus since January 2007 because of that litigation.

    Nov. 6 is the next scheduled day for the N.C. Supreme Court to issue rulings, but there is no telling when it will decide the Racial Justice Act cases.

    North Carolina's justices may be waiting because the U.S. Supreme Court has before it a similar case from Georgia, said lawyer Ken Rose of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation. Brady said it would be prudent for the North Carolina court to wait in light of the Georgia case.

    The Georgia case, Foster vs. Chatman, and the North Carolina cases focus on whether prosecutors illegally used juror strikes to specifically prevent blacks from serving on the juries, possibly on the assumption that a black juror would be less likely to convict or less likely to impose a death sentence.

    It's illegal for a lawyer to consider a person's race during jury selection.

    The outcome of the Georgia case could affect the North Carolina cases, Rose said.

    The four Racial Justice Act defendants are Marcus Reymond Robinson, who killed a teen in a robbery; Tilmon Golphin, who killed a state trooper and deputy; Christina S. "Queen" Walters, who led a gang that killed two women; and Quintel Augustine, who killed a police officer.

    The Racial Justice Act was enacted in 2009 to rectify incidents of institutional racism in the criminal justice system. Most of the state's death row inmates, regardless of their race, sought to get their death sentences commuted.

    The legislature repealed the act in 2013.

    Former Associate Justices Brady and Patricia Timmons-Goodson, who also is from Fayetteville, could not speak specifically about the Racial Justice Act cases but discussed in general why some cases may take a while.

    The court's overall caseload can be a factor, Timmons-Goodson said, and some cases are more complex, requiring more time.

    Former Associate Justice Bob Orr of Asheville said the last opinion he wrote, a ruling in a major lawsuit over state funding of public schools, had six boxes of files.

    "If the law clerks are having to go through all the records, that does eat up a boatload of time," Orr said.

    Efforts to get the justices to agree on the majority opinion (instead of having several issue separate concurring opinions) may also add to the time it takes to issue a ruling, Brady said.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/news/crim...e15901fdb.html

  5. #115
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    Georgia death penalty case at Supreme Court could affect NC Racial Justice Act cases

    WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court signaled support Monday for a black death row inmate in Georgia who claims prosecutors improperly kept African-Americans off the jury that convicted him of killing a white woman.

    The facts of the Georgia case are similar to some of the allegations raised in North Carolina's controversial Racial Justice Act cases, where a judge in 2012 commuted the sentences of four death row inmates to life without parole on the premise that Cumberland County prosecutors illegally kept black residents from serving on their juries.

    A ruling in the Georgia case could have a bearing on the North Carolina cases, which are under review by North Carolina's state Supreme Court.

    It has been illegal since a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court ruling for any lawyer to block a potential juror from sitting on a jury solely because of his or her race. U.S. Justice Elena Kagan said the Georgia case seemed as clear a violation "as a court is ever going to see" of rules the Supreme Court laid out in 1986 to prevent racial discrimination in the selection of juries.

    At least six of the nine justices indicated during arguments that black people were improperly singled out and kept off the jury that eventually sentenced defendant Timothy Tyrone Foster to death in 1987.

    Foster could win a new trial if the Supreme Court rules his way.

    Georgia courts have consistently rejected Foster's claims of discrimination, even after his lawyers obtained the prosecution's notes that revealed prosecutors' focus on the black people in the jury pool. In one example, a handwritten note headed "Definite No's" listed six people, of whom five were the remaining black prospective jurors.

    The sixth person on the list was a white woman who made clear she would never impose the death penalty, Foster's lawyer, Stephen Bright said Monday. "Even she ranked behind the black jurors," Bright said.

    The name of each potential black juror was highlighted on four different copies of the jury list and the word "black" was circled next to the race question on questionnaires for the black prospective jurors. Three of the prospective black jurors were identified in notes as "B#1," "B#2," and "B#3."

    An investigator working for the prosecutors also ranked the black prospective jurors against each other in case if "it comes down to having to pick one of the black jurors."

    In a N.C. Racial Justice Act hearing in 2012, lawyers for murder defendants Christina Walters, Tilmon Golphin and Quintel Augustine presented notes written by the prosecutors "documenting race consciousness and race-based decision-making in jury selection," Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks wrote in his ruling to commute their sentences. "The documentary and testimonial evidence of former Cumberland County prosecutors showed that race was a critical part of their jury selection strategy," Weeks said.

    Walters led a gang that killed two women; Golphin and his brother killed a Cumberland County deputy and a state trooper; Augustine killed a Fayetteville police officer.

    In a prior Racial Justice Act case, Weeks cited statistical patterns of racism in jury selection when he decided to commute Marcus Reymond Robinson's death sentence to life in prison. Robinson robbed and killed a teenage boy.

    The North Carolina legislature repealed the Racial Justice Act following Weeks' rulings.

    In the Georgia case, Georgia Deputy Attorney General Beth Burton had little support on the court for the proposition that prosecutor Stephen Lanier advanced plausible "race-neutral" reasons that resulted in an all-white jury for Foster's trial. Foster was convicted of killing 79-year-old Queen Madge White in her home in Rome, Georgia.

    Several justices noted that Lanier's reasons for excusing people from the jury changed over time, including the arrest of the cousin of one black juror. The record in the case indicates that Lanier learned of the arrest only after the jury had been seated. "That seems an out and out false statement," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said.

    A decision in the case, Foster v. Chatman, 14-8349, is expected by late spring.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/news/loca...2ab1a8d09.html

  6. #116
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    NC Supreme Court vacates Racial Justice Act decisions

    By Anne Blythe
    The News and Observer

    RALEIGH - The state Supreme Court vacated rulings in four historic Racial Justice Act cases, saying the judge erred when he did not give prosecutors more time to respond to a statistical study about race in the North Carolina courts.

    The decision overturns Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks’ finding that racial bias played a role in the cases of Marcus Reymond Robinson, Tilmon Golphin, Christina S. “Queen” Walters and Quintel Augustine.

    Under the short-lived Racial Justice Act, Weeks’ finding meant that the four death row inmates saw their sentences commuted to life in prison without a possibility for parole.

    Now the four will have to make their cases again.

    “The Supreme Court ruling does not address Judge Weeks’ findings of pervasive racial discrimination in jury selection in North Carolina and in Cumberland County at the time of the trials of these defendants,” said Ken Rose, senior staff attorney for the Center for Death Penalty Litigation. “It permits the state more time and more resources to conduct yet another study. We are confident that the ultimate result of these cases will remain the same.”

    The Racial Justice Act, adopted in 2009 as groundbreaking legislation approved largely along party lines, was repealed by lawmakers in 2013. Despite its demise, questions linger about whether the law will have life after its death.

    In addition to the four inmates who won relief under the act, all but a few of the 152 death row inmates have cases pending in the court queues. Their challenges contend that racial bias had a role in their fate, and they plan to cull from studies showing, among other things, that African-Americans are systemically excluded from serving on death-penalty juries.

    Prosecutors have disagreed with such claims, arguing that the race of a potential juror rarely plays into their decisions for keeping or excluding someone from the panel. But Racial Justice Act advocates counter that a study of 173 capital trials over a 20-year period in North Carolina shows otherwise.

    A Michigan State University study of capital cases in North Carolina between 1990 and 2010 shows that qualified black jurors were more than twice as likely as whites to be removed from juries by prosecutors with peremptory strikes.

    When Weeks ruled in April 2012 that race had played a role in Robinson’s case – the first heard and decided under the Racial Justice Act – his ruling touched on statistics about jury selection within Cumberland County and from across the state.

    In challenging the decision, prosecutors argued that Weeks’ ruling – and ultimately the Racial Justice Act – was based on a range of statistics that were too broad.

    The state Supreme Court ruling encourages both sides to present additional statistical studies.

    “We are confident that, no matter how many hearings are held or studies completed, we will win this case,” said Jay Ferguson, one of the attorneys for the inmates. “The evidence of racial bias in jury selection is simply overwhelming and undeniable. All this decision will do is add more delays and cost the state millions to conduct new studies and hold new hearings. We will be throwing more taxpayer money into a hopelessly broken death penalty.”

    The Racial Justice Act lawsuits and a series of others challenging the fairness of the death penalty have created a de facto moratorium on executions in North Carolina for nearly a decade.

    http://www.newsobserver.com/news/pol...e50478335.html

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    Judge Ammons volunteers to remove himself from hearing four racial bias cases

    A Cumberland County judge on Thursday removed himself from presiding over the cases of four people who in 2012 used a racial bias law to get off North Carolina's death row.

    During a hearing at the Cumberland County Courthouse, Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Jim Ammons said he was stepping aside to prevent any allegations about his ability to be fair from clouding the cases.

    The N.C. Supreme Court in December overturned the 4 inmates' reprieves and sent their cases to Ammons for new hearings under the state's controversial Racial Justice Act.

    Convicted murderers Marcus Reymond Robinson, Quintel Augustine, Tilmon Golphin and Christina Walters in 2012 were the first and only prisoners in the state to use the Racial Justice Act to get their death sentences commuted to life in prison without parole. The law, which was repealed in 2013, allowed death row inmates to attempt to prove racism was a factor in their cases and, based on the racism, overturn their death sentences.

    The 4 defendants persuaded now-retired Senior Resident Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks there was racial bias on the part of prosecutors in the selection of the juries that convicted the defendants and sentenced them to death.

    The defendants' lawyers since January filed many hundreds of pages of documents to argue that Ammons has conflicts of interest and biases that preclude him from presiding over these cases. They said he has professional and personal relationships with law enforcement and former colleagues in the Cumberland County District Attorney's Office that would keep him from fairly deciding whether Augustine, Walters, Robinson and Golphin should again be removed from death row.

    The lawyers accuse some of Ammons' former colleagues of racial bias and have noted that his brother-in-law used to be head of the N.C. Highway Patrol. One of Golphin's victims was a Highway Patrol trooper.

    In the court papers and again at Thursday morning's hearing, the lawyers alleged that Ammons showed racial bias when he was a prosecutor in the 1980s and used peremptory challenges to prevent several blacks from serving on a jury in a death penalty trial.

    Ammons, his voice raised sometimes in apparent anger, said he could fairly decide the cases.

    "I have sworn to administer judgment without favoritism to anyone or to the state. I will not violate those oaths for anyone or anything," he said.

    Later, he formally denied the defense lawyers' requests to recuse himself.

    But moments after that Ammons announced he would step aside.

    "As I looked out into this courtroom this morning, 2 things became very clear to me," he said.

    "No. 1: The enormous time, effort and expense these 9 defense counsel have devoted to the sole issue of replacing me with another judge.

    "No. 2: The continued burden of uncertainty and the toll of time that has happened over the last 25 years in some incidences, on all parties.

    "For these reasons, I will not allow my properly presiding over any of these cases to continue to be an issue when the court's true task should be determining the merits of these claims."

    Ammons said he would assign another judge or judges to take over the case. Defense lawyer Jay Ferguson and the others said Ammons should not be involved in the selection of any replacement judge "because of conflict and biases alleged in our motion to recuse."

    At that, Ammons said he would leave it up to the state Administrative Office of the Courts to pick the judge.

    A replacement judge will be appointed by the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, spokeswoman Sharon Gladwell said. "No timeline is established; however, appointments usually are made expeditiously," she said.

    Robinson, Augustine and Walters were in the courtroom Thursday and sat in shackles next to their lawyers. Golphin elected not to attend, but his lawyers were there on his behalf.

    About 50 spectators attended, including relatives of the defendants' victims.

    Robinson and an accomplice kidnapped, robbed and murdered teenager Erik Tornblom in 1991.

    Golphin and his brother, Kevin Golphin, killed Cumberland County Deputy David Hathcock and N.C. Highway Patrol Trooper Ed Lowry during a traffic stop on Interstate 95 in 1997.

    In 1998, Christina Walters led a gang that kidnapped 3 women, drove them to remote areas and shot them execution-style. Tracy Lambert and Susan Moore died, and the 3rd victim barely survived.

    Quintel Augustine was convicted of shooting Fayetteville police Officer Roy Turner Jr. to death in 2001. Augustine maintains his innocence.

    Afterward, Al Lowry, who was Ed Lowry's brother, criticized the proceedings.

    "They keep crying foul. The decision's been made for the death penalty. And we've been 19 years and counting. Nothing ought to take this long," he said.

    "No matter what judge they select, it's always going to be an excuse on their side."

    ----

    THE INMATES

    Marcus Reymond Robinson and an accomplice kidnapped, robbed and murdered teenager Erik Tornblom in 1991. 16 years later, Robinson was hours from being put to death before a judge halted all executions in North Carolina over legal questions about North Carolina's execution method.

    Tilmon Golphin and his brother Kevin killed Cumberland County Deputy David Hathcock and state Highway Patrol Trooper Ed Lowry during a traffic stop on Interstate 95 in 1997.

    In 1998, Christina Walters led a gang that kidnapped 3 women, drove them to remote areas and shot them execution-style. Tracy Lambert and Susan Moore died; the 3rd victim barely survived.

    Quintel Augustine was convicted of shooting Fayetteville police Officer Roy Turner Jr. to death in 2001. He maintains that he is innocent.

    HISTORY OF THE RACIAL JUSTICE ACT

    August 2009: North Carolina passes the Racial Justice Act. It allows death row inmates to seek review of racial influence in their cases. If discriminatory practices are found, the inmates' sentences can be converted to life in prison without parole.

    April 2012: Out of about 150 claims filed by death row inmates, Marcus Robinson of Cumberland County was the 1st defendant to present evidence alleging racial bias in his trial. Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks rules that racism affected Robinson's trial and converts his sentence to life in prison without parole.

    July 2012: Lawmakers amend the Racial Justice Act to make it more difficult for defendants to prove allegations of racism.

    October 2012: Quintel Augustine, Christina Walters and Tilmon Golphin - all convicted for Cumberland County homicides - present their Racial Justice Act cases.

    December 2012: Weeks rules that racism influenced their trials. He converts their sentences to life in prison without parole.

    June 2013: The legislature repeals the Racial Justice Act.

    December 2015: The state Supreme Court overturns Weeks' rulings in the Robinson, Augustine, Walters and Golphin cases and sends them back to Cumberland County Superior Court to be done again.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/news/crim...217d3e12c.html

  8. #118
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    New judge to hear 4 Racial Justice Act murder cases

    A retired judge from the Charlotte area is taking over North Carolina's first four Racial Justice Act death penalty cases - all from Cumberland County - the state Administrative Office of the Courts said.

    And in a separate but related issue, the North Carolina Supreme Court is going to consider whether the rest of the state's roughly 145 Racial Justice Act defendants are entitled to hearings to pursue their claims that racism tainted their trials, the Center for Death Penalty Litigation said on Monday. The court is to decide whether those inmates get to use the act, despite the fact that the state legislature repealed it in 2013.

    The Racial Justice Act was enacted in 2009. Most of the of the state's death row population tried to use it.

    Only four, all defendants in Fayetteville-area homicides, received hearings before the legislature overturned the law.

    Those four persuaded Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks in 2012 that racism influenced the selection of their juries. Weeks commuted their sentences to life in prison without parole.

    The defendants were Marcus Reymond Robinson, who killed a teen in a robbery; Tilmon Golphin, who with his brother killed a deputy and a state trooper in a traffic stop; Christina S. "Queen" Walters, who led a gang that kidnapped and killed two women; and Quintel Augustine, convicted of murdering a Fayetteville police officer.

    The state Supreme Court in December overturned Weeks' decisions and ordered new hearings for the four defendants.

    The court said Weeks should have given the prosecutors more opportunity to prepare their response to the defendants' evidence. The evidence included a detailed statistical study of 20 years of jury selection in capital cases.

    The Supreme Court said Weeks should have separated the cases of Augustine, Walters and Golphin, instead of hearing them as a group.

    "No one has said his findings were wrong, just that procedurally there have been problems," said spokeswoman Gerda Stein of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation.

    Her agency has handled much of the Racial Justice Act litigation.

    All four defendants were sent back to death row.

    The Supreme Court ordered Jim Ammons, the senior resident Superior Court judge in Cumberland County, to take over the four cases. But in June, Ammons withdrew after the lawyers for the four death row defendants contended he has biases and conflicts of interest that would prevent him from being fair.

    On Aug. 19, state Supreme Court Chief Justice Mark Martin assigned retired Superior Court Judge Erwin Spainhour of Cabarrus County, near Charlotte, to take the cases.

    Spainhour, like Weeks before him, is to decide if racism tainted the trials of the four inmates.

    Meanwhile, approximately 140 more death row inmates contend they should get the same opportunity as Robinson, Walters, Golphin and Augustine.

    They argue that once the government grants a right and someone attempts to exercise that right, it's unconstitutional for the government to block the person from using that right, Stein said.

    The question is to be considered by the state Supreme Court for two murder cases from Iredell County, Stein said.

    One of the defendants is Rayford Burke. He is a black man who in 1993 was convicted and sentenced to death by an all-white jury for the shooting death of a police informant, says a summary of the case from Stein's office.

    The other defendant is Andrew Darrin Ramseur, a black man whose jury, too, was all white. He was sentenced to death for killing two white people in a convenience store robbery, Stein's office said.

    The lawyers for the Racial Justice Act defendants say prosecutors for illegal, racist reasons rejected blacks from serving on the juries in these trials.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/news/loca...637fd667b.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

  9. #119
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Judge rejects Racial Justice Act claims; 4 inmates stay on death row

    RALEIGH -- A judge this week rejected an effort by four death row inmates to use North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act to avoid execution.

    In a ruling dated Monday and filed this morning in Cumberland County Superior Court, Superior Court Judge Erwin Spainhour said the four convicted murderers can no longer use the Racial Justice Act because it was repealed in 2013.

    The Racial Justice Act, enacted in 2009, allowed inmates try to prove racial bias tainted their trials. If they prevailed, their death sentences would be commuted to live in prison without parole. Most of North Carolina’s 150 inmates on death row pursued Racial Justice Act claims.

    Four inmates from Cumberland County murders won these claims in Cumberland County Superior Court in 2012 and were removed from death row. They were the first and only condemned inmates to do so before the legislature repealed the law in 2013.

    But then the state Supreme Court overturned their cases in 2015 -- a decision that put them back on death row.

    The Supreme Court sent their cases back to Cumberland County for further consideration. There, prosecutors argued that the four inmates could no longer use the Racial Justice Act because it had been repealed.

    The inmates’ lawyers countered that it is unconstitutional to retroactively take the Racial Justice Act away from them. The lawyers said the inmates filed their claims when the law was still on the books and had obtained relief under it.

    Spainhour decided that four inmates’ cases were still pending, and had not reached what is considered to be a final judgment. So with the repeal of the Racial Justice Act they can no longer use it.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/top_news/...a0996dfa7.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

  10. #120
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Six Death Row prisoners in North Carolina to get new day in court

    By Josh Shaffer
    NewsObserver

    In 2002, Quintel Augustine went on trial accused of murdering a Fayetteville police officer — a notorious case that forced prosecutors to pick a jury in Brunswick County, 90 miles away.

    Augustine was 25 but had already served two terms in prison.

    The officer, Roy Gene Turner Jr., was a five-year veteran of the Fayetteville force, who left behind a fiancee and a 6-month-old child.

    But another distinction has kept the case in dispute ever since: Augustine was black, and the officer, like every member of the jury that handed down the death penalty, was white.

    Court filings argue that Cumberland County prosecutors improperly used race as a primary factor in choosing Augstine’s jurors. In one case, a potential juror was described in handwritten notes as a “black wino,” and then rejected. Notes for a white juror, who was accepted, read “drinks — country boy — OK.”

    Next week, the N.C. Supreme Court will consider whether Augustine and three others on Death Row should should have their sentences reduced to life in prison.

    This reprieve had already been granted to all four of them under the state’s Racial Justice Act, which let prisoners seek relief when they could show racial prejudice in jury selection. But their death sentences were restored when the legislature repealed the law in 2013.

    Two more Death Row defendants will argue that their cases were tainted by the same racial bias the courts have already found with the other four defendants, and they are requesting a hearing to present that evidence.

    Their advocates argue the Supreme Court has the chance to restore a tool created to root out widespread prejudice in the legal system dating back more than a century.

    Death Row debate

    In 2009, when the Racial Justice Act was passed, the minority population in North Carolina had reached 34 percent, according to the nonprofit Center for Death Penalty Litigation. But of the 142 prisoners on Death Row, nearly half were convicted by juries with no minority representation.

    A 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Batson v. Kentucky, forbid prosecutors from rejecting jurors on the basis of race alone. But researchers at Michigan State University found in a 2012 study of North Carolina death-penalty trials that black jurors were 2.5 times more likely to be struck.

    Critics of the law called it so broad that it created a loophole for any defendant given capital punishment. When he signed its repeal in 2013, Gov. Pat McCrory said, “Nearly every person on death row, regardless of race, has appealed their death sentence under the Racial Justice Act,” according to the Associated Press.

    But its defenders at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation cite “a mountain” of evidence that already shows decades of bias, and overturning the law serves as a means for ignoring it.

    “Whether you look at it from a legal perspective or a common-sense perspective, it doesn’t make much sense to say we’re going to create this mechanism to see if there’s racial bias, we’re going to find all this evidence and then we’re going to repeal the law,” said David Weiss, attorney with the center.

    Only four people had sentences reduced under the act before its repeal: Tilmon Golphin, Christina Walters, Marcus Robinson and Augustine — all of them convicted of murder in Cumberland County. The other two seeking the same chance: Andrew Ramseur and Rayford Burke, both from Iredell County.

    Their attorneys come from the center, the ACLU, the NAACP, the state appellate defender’s office and private practice. N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein’s office will handle the case for the state. A spokeswoman for Stein’s office declined to comment on active litigation.

    Black jurors rejected

    In Ramseur’s case, a black 21-year-old defendant got the death sentence from an all-white jury. All of the qualified black jurors were rejected, his attorney Daniel Shatz wrote in a 2016 brief.

    During his 2010 trial in Statesville, four rows of courtroom seats were cordoned off with crime-scene tape, forcing his family to sit in the back, Shatz wrote. Racially charged comments appeared on a local newspaper website, including “He should be hanging from the nearest traffic light as a warning to the rest.” The court declined to change the trial location or allow a Racial Justice Act review.

    Walters, one of the few women on the state’s Death Row, was sentenced to death in 2000 for her part in a series of gang-related murders in Fayetteville. During her trial, prosecutors rejected 10 out of 14 qualified black jurors and four of 27 whites, wrote center attorney Shelagh Kenney in her brief.

    One black woman was struck, Kenney wrote, because her brother had been convicted on an unrelated gun charge. The woman told prosecutors that she and her brother were not close and his criminal record would not affect her jury service. At the same time, a non-black juror was chosen despite having a brother jailed on a murder charge and writing him regular letters.

    In Robinson’s case, the prosecutor asked a potential black juror if he had graduated from high school or had trouble reading — questions not asked of any others, wrote ACLU attorney Cassandra Stubbs in a 2018 brief. Half the black jurors were rejected compared to 14 percent from other groups.

    Robinson was the first to be granted relief under the act.

    “Never before has any legislature enacted a statute designed to remedy suspected systemic racial bias in capital sentencing,” Stubbs wrote, “only to repeal such a statute when the racial bias was found.”

    Read more here: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/lo...#storylink=cpy
    "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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