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
Bookmarks