A new video produced by the American Civil Liberties Union features three North Carolina citizens who believe they were excluded from serving on juries in capital cases because of their race. The video was released in conjunction with the first court challenge brought under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act. The defendant, Marcus Robinson, is asking his death sentence be commuted to life without parole because potential African-American jurors were struck from his jury at a rate 3.5 times higher than other potential jurors. Laverne Keys (pictured), who was excluded from a capital jury in 1999, believes she was removed because of her race: “It made me feel like I was back in 1960, that racism is still very much alive. It makes you wonder whether all these people are being given a fair trial or given a fair consequence so far as the death penalty,” she said in the video. Denny LeBoeuf, Director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, said, “The stories presented in this video make clear that the death penalty system in North Carolina and across the nation is plagued by discrimination. The Racial Justice Act is a crucial means of ensuring that no one is wrongfully executed because of racial bias.” Watch the video.
Tyrone Noling (pictured) is an inmate on Ohio’s death row whose guilt has been called into doubt by a lack of physical evidence, recanting witnesses and refusal by the state to conduct a DNA test. Andrew Cohen, writing in a recent issue of The Atlantic, compared Noling's case to that of Troy Davis, who was executed in Georgia in 2011, despite doubts about his guilt. Noling was convicted of the 1990 murders of an elderly couple in their home. Initially, there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, and no witnesses against him. When an aggressive investigator took over the case, some witnesses began giving statements against Noling. Cohen reports that all of these witnesses have since recanted their statements, claiming they were pressured by the prosecutor. In 2009, 13 years after the original trial, prosecutors provided defense attorneys with handwritten police notes from the investigations in 1990 in which a witness identified another man as having committed the murders. The state is currently refusing DNA testing of evidence collected from the crime scene that might place this man at the scene of the crime.
On January 23, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the state of Ohio challenging the unconditional writ of habeas corpus and bar to the re-prosecution of Joe D'Ambrosio (pictured), thus ending the capital case. He has now been freed from death row with all charges dismissed. A federal District Court had first overturned D'Ambrosio's conviction in 2006 because the state had withheld key evidence from the defense. The federal court originally allowed the state to re-prosecute him, but just before trial the state revealed the existence of even more important evidence and requested further delay. Also the state did not divulge in a timely manner that the key witness against D'Ambrosio had died. In 2010, the District Court barred D’Ambrosio’s re-prosecution because of the prosecutors’ misconduct. The court concluded that these developments biased D'Ambrosio's chances for a fair trial, and hence the state was barred from retrying him. District Court Judge Kathleen O'Malley wrote: “For 20 years, the State held D’Ambrosio on death row, despite wrongfully withholding evidence that ‘would have substantially increased a reasonable juror’s doubt of D’Ambrosio’s guilt.’ Despite being ordered to do so by this Court … the State still failed to turn over all relevant and material evidence relating to the crime of which D’Ambrosio was convicted. Then, once it was ordered to provide D’Ambrosio a constitutional trial or release him within 180 days, the State did neither. During those 180 days, the State engaged in substantial inequitable conduct, wrongfully retaining and delaying the production of yet more potentially exculpatory evidence… To fail to bar retrial in such extraordinary circumstances surely would fail to serve the interests of justice.”
On January 10, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed (8-1) the murder conviction of Juan Smith because the New Orleans District Attorney's Office had withheld critical evidence that would have been favorable to Smith at his trial. Smith had been convicted of murder in the course of an armed robbery based on the sole eyewitness testimony of Larry Boatner. There was no DNA, fingerprints, or other physical evidence that linked Smith to the 1995 crime. Appellate attorneys later learned that prosecutors failed to disclose reports of initial interviews with Boatner in which he said he could not describe the intruders and had not seen their faces. Relying on Brady v. Maryland, which requires a state to disclose evidence that is favorable to the defense and material to the defendant’s guilt or punishment, the Court overturned Smith’s conviction, stating, "Boatner's testimony was the only evidence linking Smith to the crime. And Boatner's undisclosed statements directly contradict his testimony . . . .Boatner's undisclosed statements were plainly material." The decision in favor of Smith was the latest in a series of Supreme Court decisions revealing a pattern of prosecutorial misconduct in the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office. According to the Orleans Public Defender’s Office, 28 convictions obtained by the district attorney’s office were later ruled to have been tainted by Brady violations. (Smith is on death row in Louisiana because the conviction in the above case (now overturned) was used to help obtain a death sentence against him in another murder. This decision will likely assist him in challenging his death sentence.)
(On January 10, DPIC posted an item about an editorial in the New York Times criticizing the arbitrariness of the death penalty. That editorial relied heavily on the research of Prof. John Donohue (pictured) of Stanford Law School and his study of the Connecticut death penalty. This post looks further at the underlying study.) Prof. Donohue's research found that out of thousands of murders committed in Connecticut between 1973 and 2007, only one resulted in an execution of the defendant. He concluded that "the state’s record of handling death-eligible cases represents a chaotic and unsound criminal justice policy that serves neither deterrence nor retribution. . . .At best, the Connecticut system haphazardly singles out a handful for execution from a substantial array of horrible murders," and that "arbitrariness and discrimination are defining features of the state’s capital punishment regime."
On January 12, HBO cable TV will air a new documentary, Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory, the final installment of a trilogy that recounts the story of three wrongfully convicted teenagers in Arkansas--Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley--known as the "West Memphis Three." The young men were convicted of the 1993 rape and murder of three boys in West Memphis, Arkansas. Baldwin and Misskelley received life sentences, and Echols was sentenced to death. Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory shows the conclusion of their case in 2011, when Echols, Baldwin and Misskelley entered special guilty pleas in which they continued to assert their innocence but admitted the state could likely convict them again in a new trial. The pleas allowed Baldwin and Misskelley to be released from prison and Echols to be spared the death penalty, and also freed. The first two films, released in 1996 and 2000 respectively, raised awareness of the case and helped spur an international movement to free the men. Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory will debut on Thursday, January 12, at 9:00 p.m. ET on HBO. See below for a trailer to the film.
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A new video produced by the American Civil Liberties Union features three North Carolina citizens who believe they were excluded from serving on juries in capital cases because of their race. The video was released in conjunction with the first court challenge brought under North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act. The defendant, Marcus Robinson, is asking his death sentence be commuted to life without parole because potential African-American jurors were struck from his jury at a rate 3.5 times higher than other potential jurors. Laverne Keys (pictured), who was excluded from a capital jury in 1999, believes she was removed because of her race: “It made me feel like I was back in 1960, that racism is still very much alive. It makes you wonder whether all these people are being given a fair trial or given a fair consequence so far as the death penalty,” she said in the video. Denny LeBoeuf, Director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project, said, “The stories presented in this video make clear that the death penalty system in North Carolina and across the nation is plagued by discrimination. The Racial Justice Act is a crucial means of ensuring that no one is wrongfully executed because of racial bias.” 
Tyrone Noling (pictured) is an inmate on Ohio’s death row whose guilt has been called into doubt by a lack of physical evidence, recanting witnesses and refusal by the state to conduct a DNA test. Andrew Cohen, writing in a recent issue of The Atlantic, compared Noling's case to that of Troy Davis, who was executed in Georgia in 2011, despite doubts about his guilt. Noling was convicted of the 1990 murders of an elderly couple in their home. Initially, there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, and no witnesses against him. When an aggressive investigator took over the case, some witnesses began giving statements against Noling. Cohen reports that all of these witnesses have since recanted their statements, claiming they were pressured by the prosecutor. In 2009, 13 years after the original trial, prosecutors provided defense attorneys with handwritten police notes from the investigations in 1990 in which a witness identified another man as having committed the murders. The state is currently refusing DNA testing of evidence collected from the crime scene that might place this man at the scene of the crime.
On January 23, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the state of Ohio challenging the unconditional writ of habeas corpus and bar to the re-prosecution of Joe D'Ambrosio (pictured), thus ending the capital case. He has now been freed from death row with all charges dismissed. A federal District Court had first overturned D'Ambrosio's conviction in 2006 because the state had withheld key evidence from the defense. The federal court originally allowed the state to re-prosecute him, but just before trial the state revealed the existence of even more important evidence and requested further delay. Also the state did not divulge in a timely manner that the key witness against D'Ambrosio had died. In 2010, the District Court barred D’Ambrosio’s re-prosecution because of the prosecutors’ misconduct. The court concluded that these developments biased D'Ambrosio's chances for a fair trial, and hence the state was barred from retrying him. District Court Judge Kathleen O'Malley wrote: “For 20 years, the State held D’Ambrosio on death row, despite wrongfully withholding evidence that ‘would have substantially increased a reasonable juror’s doubt of D’Ambrosio’s guilt.’ Despite being ordered to do so by this Court … the State still failed to turn over all relevant and material evidence relating to the crime of which D’Ambrosio was convicted. Then, once it was ordered to provide D’Ambrosio a constitutional trial or release him within 180 days, the State did neither. During those 180 days, the State engaged in substantial inequitable conduct, wrongfully retaining and delaying the production of yet more potentially exculpatory evidence… To fail to bar retrial in such extraordinary circumstances surely would fail to serve the interests of justice.”
On January 10, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed (8-1) the murder conviction of Juan Smith because the New Orleans District Attorney's Office had withheld critical evidence that would have been favorable to Smith at his trial. Smith had been convicted of murder in the course of an armed robbery based on the sole eyewitness testimony of Larry Boatner. There was no DNA, fingerprints, or other physical evidence that linked Smith to the 1995 crime. Appellate attorneys later learned that prosecutors failed to disclose reports of initial interviews with Boatner in which he said he could not describe the intruders and had not seen their faces. Relying on Brady v. Maryland, which requires a state to disclose evidence that is favorable to the defense and material to the defendant’s guilt or punishment, the Court overturned Smith’s conviction, stating, "Boatner's testimony was the only evidence linking Smith to the crime. And Boatner's undisclosed statements directly contradict his testimony . . . .Boatner's undisclosed statements were plainly material." The decision in favor of Smith was the latest in a series of Supreme Court decisions revealing a pattern of prosecutorial misconduct in the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office. According to the Orleans Public Defender’s Office, 28 convictions obtained by the district attorney’s office were later ruled to have been tainted by Brady violations. (Smith is on death row in Louisiana because the conviction in the above case (now overturned) was used to help obtain a death sentence against him in another murder. This decision will likely assist him in challenging his death sentence.)
(On January 10, 
