Capital Trial Update 8/31/10

In Iredell County, jurors are hearing the second week of testimony in the trial of Travis Ramseur.

In Catawba County, Edwardo Wong‘s motion for a new judge has been denied.  Wong had alleged that Judge Nathaniel Poovey violated his right to counsel by meeting with him outside the presence of his court-appointed lawyers and offering legal advice.  Jury selection is continuing this week.

There is no news on the Cumberland County trial of Dexter McRae or the Robeson County trial of Deonte Harris.

Capital Trial Update 8/26/10

In Statesville, the prosecution is putting on evidence in the trial of Travis Ramseur.

In Fayetteville, opening statements are being heard this morning in the trial of Dexter McRae.

In Newton, jury selection is continuing in the trial of Eduardo Wong.  Wong’s attorneys have made a motion to recuse the judge, but complete information is not available at this time.

Judge Tosses Death Penalty After Police Misconduct

In Charlotte, a judge has taken the death penalty off the table in the trial of Demeatrius Montgomery after the lead investigator in the case admitted to destroying notes from some of his interviews and falsifying others.  Prosecutors have elected not to appeal the judge’s decision, and the investigator has been removed from duty.  Among the notes destroyed may have been an interview indicating that another suspect confessed to the crime.

Judge Forrest Bridges should be applauded for having the courage to do the right thing.  The law says that when police cheat, there should be consequences.  But it is a scary thing for an elected judge in any case – much less a capital case, and exponentially less in a capital case involving the murder of two police officers – to enforce that law.

This case means a great deal to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police force.  They lost two of their own.  They deserve to know what happened to officers Sean Clark and Jeff Shelton.  And yet when it was so critically important to get it right, one officer still felt it necessary to cut corners.

An execution should never follow in the wake of misconduct.  Montgomery is still facing two counts of first-degree murder and if convicted will spend the rest of his life in prison.  That’s not getting off easy, that’s justice.

Faulty Forensic Evidence in Cases of Three NC Executed

A report released today by two former FBI agents, commissioned to review North Carolina’s State Bureau of Investigation laboratory in the wake of the Greg Taylor exoneration, finds that the convictions of three people executed in North Carolina were based in part on forensic reports and testimony that were, to be kind, misleading.  The report is available online here.

The executed persons identified in the report are Desmond Carter (report confirmed the presence of blood on an item when the test was in fact negative), John Rose (report stated that there were chemical indications for the presence of blood and no further tests were done when in fact further tests were done and were negative), and Timothy Keel (report stated that blood test was inconclusive when in fact subsequent tests were negative).

The report also identified four current death row inmates whose cases involved similar errors by the SBI, as well as five potentially innocent people who died in prison before this information came to light.

The report is focused on one test performed by one division of the lab between 1987 and 2003, and only looked into cases in which certain language, identified as misleading in the Taylor case, was repeated in the lab’s report.  Still, the survey identified 269 defendants who were charged based on faulty evidence.

Imagine how many more potentially innocent persons could be identified through a more comprehensive review.

Capital Juries Being Picked Across NC

In Statesville, eleven jurors have been selected for the trial of Travis Ramseur, who is accused of shooting two men in 2004.  Once twelve jurors have been seated, four alternates will also be selected.

In Catawba County, jury selection is just getting underway for Edwardo Wong‘s trial.  Wong is accused of killing a state trooper in 2008.  The trial was moved from Haywood County due to extensive pretrial publicity.

Meanwhile in Fayetteville,  there has been little news about the ongoing capital trial of Dexter McRae, who is accused of stabbing his estranged wife to death in 2006.

NC Racial Justice Act – First Cases Filed

(a press release from the Center for Death Penalty Litigation)

NC Racial Justice Act: First Five Death Row Defendants File Motions Citing Strong Evidence of Racial Bias

Durham, NC — One year ago, the North Carolina General Assembly took the trailblazing step of passing the Racial Justice Act, a guarantee that no person would be put to death because of racial bias in our state’s justice system.

This week, the law is finally being put to the test. Five death row inmates have asked the courts to convert their death sentences to life imprisonment without parole. All can prove that race played a key role in their trials.

The cases were filed today in Stanly, Randolph, Martin, Forsyth and Davie counties.

“Race still plays a part in determining who lives and dies in our justice system, and that is unacceptable,” said Center for Death Penalty Litigation Executive Director Malcolm R. Hunter. “We are proud that North Carolina is honestly confronting this legacy of injustice.”

North Carolina’s handling of the cases will be watched around the country, as it is the first state to undertake a comprehensive effort to sever the historical ties between race and the death penalty. The Racial Justice Act cements North Carolina’s long history of leadership in efforts to promote racial equality.

The cases are supported by three new comprehensive studies of the death penalty in North Carolina.

“We would like to live and practice in a system where race does not matter,” said Ken Rose, staff attorney at CDPL. “But the results show that white victims are valued more highly than black ones, and that black jurors are being denied their right to serve. This evidence of racial bias cannot be ignored.”

One of the new studies, from Michigan State University, shows that prosecutors in capital trials used peremptory strikes to exclude eligible blacks from juries at more than twice the rate that they excluded whites. Of the 159 inmates now on death row in North Carolina, 31 were sentenced by all-white juries, and another 38 had only one minority on their sentencing juries.

Two more studies, one from Michigan State University and one from the University of Colorado, show that those who kill whites are more likely to get the death penalty than those who kill blacks. The MSU study found that a defendant is 2.6 times more likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white. The UC study found that a defendant’s odds of getting the death penalty increase by 2.96 times if the victim is white.

The findings echo those of previous studies in North Carolina and around the country.

The MSU study also found that in some districts, minority defendants were more likely to be sentenced to death than white defendants.

The five cases presented to the courts today reveal these problems in stark relief.

In all five cases, the victims were white and the defendants were minorities, and prosecutors struck eligible blacks from the juries at far greater rates than eligible whites. In several cases, prosecutors rejected eligible black jurors even while accepting similar white jurors.

Three of the defendants were sentenced by all-white juries. In the other cases, only one or two minorities sat on the juries — even in Martin County, where nearly half the population was black.

In the Randolph County case, one member of the all-white jury admitted after the fact that “bigotry” influenced his decision to vote for the execution of a black defendant. In Union County, the defendant was referred to as a “n—–” during testimony.

“We don’t condone the crimes these men committed, and even if they win their cases under the Racial Justice Act, they will remain in prison for life,” said Hunter. “But we cannot, in good conscience, execute people who received death sentences because of the color of their skin, or their victims’ skin.”

The Racial Justice Act went into effect on August 11, 2009. Kentucky is the only other state with similar, but less comprehensive, legislation.

North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue said when she signed the act that it “ensures that when North Carolina hands down our state’s harshest punishment to our most heinous criminals, the decision is based on the facts and the law, not racial prejudice.”

The Racial Justice Act is exceptional because — much like civil rights laws — it allows the use of statewide or regional statistical evidence to prove racial bias, and it specifies that even unintentional bias is grounds for reexamining a death sentence. Those provisions were included with the understanding that racial bias is very rarely openly admitted, and evidence of trends is often the only way to prove it.

Inmates on death row were given until August 10, 2010 to file claims under the act.

As the deadline approaches, North Carolina begins a challenging new chapter in its history — one in which the state has an opportunity to acknowledge the fact  of continuing racial bias and scrub it away from the courtrooms that decide matters of life and death.