Jan. 22
TEXAS:
Dallas DA Craig Watkins to push for law allowing appeals based on racial
factors
Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said he plans to advocate for a
state law that would allow criminals to appeal their conviction or sentence on
the grounds that race was a factor.
The Racial Justice Act would be based in part on similar laws passed in recent
years in North Carolina and Kentucky and would apply, at least initially, only
in death penalty cases, Watkins said in an interview Monday. Defendants would
be allowed to present evidence from their case or through general statistics to
show that race was a significant factor in their prosecution or sentence.
"Throughout history, race has unfortunately played a part, an ugly part, in our
criminal justice system," Watkins said. "This is an opportunity for us to
address not only the past, and those individuals who are still being affected
by the disparities in treatment, but also in looking forward to make sure that
we don't have those same disparities in our criminal justice system."
Watkins acknowledged a difficult fight for any such bill in the heavily
conservative Texas Legislature. But he said he sees a benefit in floating the
proposal now nonetheless because "even it it's not passed, at least we've
started the conversation," he said.
Watkins said he plans to discuss the idea with lawmakers and hopes to have a
bill filed int he next few months.
At least 1 prominent advocate for criminal justice reforms, Innocence Project
of Texas chief counsel Jeff Blackburn, said he was skeptical.
"I think the chances of getting something like that done are between slim and
none," Blackburn said. He added, "I think that on a practical level, this kind
of Legislature, you've got to be tightly focused."
State Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, a prominent criminal justice advocate, said
he would cnosider a bill.
"I am going to talk with some other lawmakers to see if we can get bipartisan
support for this initiative," Ellis said through a spokesman.
Watkins, who is midway through his 2nd term, is the 1st black elected district
attorney in the state. The work of his administration to exonerate wrongly
convicted Dallas Cuonty defendants, largely through DNA testing, has earned him
national acclaim.
According to the district attorney's office, 28 of the 33 people who have been
exonerated of crimes since 2001 are black.
Sentencing disparity
Academic studies have argued that a racial disparity in sentencing exists. One
2008 study by a University of Denver professor concluded that black defendants
in Harris County, which includes Houston, were more likely to get a death
sentence than white defendants.
Blacks comprise 40 % of Texas' nearly 300 death row inmates, while 11 % of the
state's population is black. Researechers caution, however, that such raw
numers don't take into account a number of factors.
Watkins said the law would increase the credibility of Dallas Cunty prosecutors
in the eyes of potential jurors. Without that credibility, he said, "it's less
likely that we'll be in position to convict the guilty and get the adequate
punishment."
Kentucky's law, passed in 1998, allows a defendant facing the death penalty to
seek a hearing under the act before trial. Only a tiny number of defendants
have successfully taken the death penalty off the table, said Allison Connelly,
a professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law who has studied the
act.
The North Carolina Legislature passed a bill in 2009 that allowed defendants to
use statistics and other evidence. But after Republicans won control of the
Legislature the next year, lawmakers unsuccessfully tried to repeal the bill.
The Legislature last year barred many statistics from being used, limiting
defendants only to direct evidence that applied to their cases.
Conflicted
Watkins has long been conflicted abouthte death penalty, which he opposed for
much of his life. He revealed last year that his great-grandfather was executed
by the state and around the same time that he said state legislators ought to
review death penalty procedures to ensure the punishment is fairly
administered.
On Monday, he said his views on capital punishment are "somewhere irrelevant."
"I'm just of the opinion that if we're going to seek it that it has to be
fairly administered," he said. "No matter where you come from, what you look
like, it has to be fairly administered."
Veteran defense attorney Brad Lollar has represented defendants in 13 death
penalty cases. He said he applauds the effort to address the apparent disparity
in the way capital punshment is handed down.
"That's been a problem and that's been an issue that we've seen come up time
and again here in Dallas during the time that I've been practicing," said
Lollar, also a former chief public defender for the county.
Lollar said it's important "to keep the issue in the forefront of people's
minds, perhaps to when they're considering the death penalty and the
application of it. So, yeah, I'm all for it."
Officials with the Texas District & County Attorneys Association, the state
prosecutors group, said they weren't aware how prosecutors felt yet about a
potential act. But Watkins said he wasn't concerned if the idea would be
unpopular with other prosecutors.
"We don't make a determination on what we're going to do based upon what other
DAs are doing in the state. We've never done that," Watkins said. "We're just
going to keep pushing the envelope forward to make justice work for the state
of Texas, and Texas has an opportunity to lead the country when it comes to
what it means to be a prosecutor and what justice is."
(source: Dallas Morning News)
VIRGINIA:
Prosecutors to pursue death penalty in Norfolk police officer's death
Prosecutors say they'll pursue the death penalty in the trial of accused killer
Raymond Perry.
But first, he'll need a new lawyer. Greg Turpin asked to be removed from the
case because he's running for Va. Beach Commonwealth's Attorney. He was removed
and there will be a hearing on January 30 to formally appoint someone else,
said Commonwealth's Attorney Macie Pridgen.
Perry, 21, and 24-year-old Kareem Turner are charged in the October 2010 murder
of Victor Decker, who was off duty when he attended a fundraising event at
Atlantis nightclub on Oceana Blvd. Decker's body was found beside his truck on
October 26.
During an October 2012 hearing, witnesses testified that Perry told them he
robbed or shot Decker, or they saw him acting suspicious outside the
gentleman's club that night, prosecutors said.
In an August jailhouse interview following his arrest in July, Perry told
13News he didn't kill Decker, that he didn't know him, had never met him, had
never seen him before and wasn't at the club that night. Perry said he thought
perhaps inmates were giving police false information in hopes of getting
reduced time behind bars.
Perry is charged with capital murder, 1st degree, robbery and 2 counts of use
of firearm. Turner is charged with 2nd degree murder and has a preliminary
hearing set for March 14.
(source: WVEC News)
LOUISIANA:
Harvey man on death row should get new trial due to drug use, attorneys allege
A Harvey man sentenced to die for killing a store clerk in Marrero in 2005
should get a new trial or at least have his punishment modified, his attorneys
will argue in March. Isaiah Doyle, 30, doesn't deny he killed Hwa Lee on Aug.
4, 2005, but his attorneys are resurrecting claims that his extensive drug use
exacerbated mental illness -- claims the jury rejected in convicting him and
recommending the death penalty.
Doyle was convicted of 1st-degree murder and was sentenced to die by lethal
injection, following his eventful March 2011 trial in which he told jurors from
the witness stand that he would shoot them and decapitate one of them.
Lee, 26, worked as a cashier at the Barataria Boulevard store her Korean
immigrant parents owned. Doyle shot her despite her complying with his demands
for cash and cigarettes.
Doyle was the last person in Jefferson Parish charged with a capital offense.
No one currently is charged with first-degree murder, and before Doyle was
ordered to die, a Jefferson Parish judge had not handed down the punishment
since 2004.
Doyle's appellate attorneys, Richard Bourke and Christine Lehmann of the
Louisiana Capital Assistance Center in New Orleans, filed papers in court last
March seeking the new trial largely on grounds that they had new evidence
supporting their claim that Doyle was intoxicated when he killed Lee. By law,
the attorneys must have new evidence that wasn't available before the trial.
That evidence, they say, comes from Doyle's partner, Jose Rojas, who pleaded
guilty to manslaughter for his role as the driver, after Doyle was convicted
and sentenced to die.
Rojas alleges in an affidavit that he and Doyle were awake about 2 days leading
up to the homicide, drinking beer and cognac and taking a mixture of Xanax,
heroin and cocaine.
In this image taken from security video, Isaiah Doyle enters a Barataria
Boulevard convenience store moments before he gunned down clerk Hwa Lee. Doyle
was sentenced to die for the crime and seeks a new trial.
"Isaiah was a serious drug addict," Rojas said in the affidavit. "We would do
drugs together but he was much worse off than me. He used to overdo it a lot."
Sarah Deland, a forensic psychiatrist who testified for the defense during the
trial, reviewed Rojas' affidavit and found that "there is at least a reasonable
possibility that his intoxicated and drugged condition would have precluded the
presence of a specific intent to kill or inflict great bodily harm at the time
of the killing."
The jury heard testimony of Doyle's drug use and rejected it, as well as
Doyle's claims of insanity, in convicting him and recommending the death
penalty. His attorneys seek to argue the claims again, saying that only after
the trial did they learn from Rojas the extent of his drug use. The attorneys
also are raising anew claims of Doyle's mental illness and low IQ - by law,
such people cannot be executed.
"We would do drugs together but he was much worse off than me. He used to
overdo it a lot," Jose Rojas said of convicted killer Isaiah Doyle.The
attorneys also allege, again, that Louisiana and Jefferson Parish violated the
National Voter Registration Act, which in turn affects the jury pool
composition.
Jefferson Parish gets its jury pool list from voter registration forms and
driver's license lists.
Assistant District Attorney Vince Paciera said Doyle's trial attorneys had
access to information about Doyle's heroin use, through a statement Rojas gave
to a detective. In it, Rojas said Doyle was a heroin addict and had used the
narcotic, "like right before" he killed Lee.
Paciera also says Doyle's attorneys had information on voter registration
before the trial.
Attorneys had been scheduled to argue the new-trial request in November, but it
was postponed to Tuesday because Doyle was sick. The hearing was postponed
again last week, because a witness was not available. They asked that the
hearing be held March 21.
Judge June Darensburg of the 24th Judicial District Court has already denied
Doyle's request for a new trial. That request was filed days after the jury
recommended he get the death penalty.
(source: New Orleans Times-Picayne)
USA (NEW YORK):
Cop killer's lawyers angling for life in prison instead of lethal injection
He killed 2 NYPD cops in cold blood - but he's a pussycat with the other
convicts.
Defense attorneys for Ronell Wilson say that when defendants are portrayed as
dangerous it often sways federal death penalty juries to vote for execution. So
they want a judge to bar prosecutors from telling jurors in Wilson's upcoming
penalty phase retrial that the man convicted of gunning down 2 undercover cops
on Staten Island in 2003 poses an ongoing risk -in the hope of him getting life
behind bars instead of lethal injection.
"In the almost 7 years since he was sentenced to death ... Mr. Wilson has not
committed a single act of violence - not even of a minor nature," attorneys
David Stern, Colleen Brady and Beverly Van Ness wrote Brooklyn federal Judge
Nicholas Garaufis.
Wilson's 1st death sentence was overturned on procedural grounds.
But Brooklyn federal prosecutors have insisted that Wilson still "represents a
continuing danger" and poses a "serious threat to the lives and safety of
others."
Last year, the feds say that Wilson was involved in an incident in prison where
he refused to leave a recreation area, flashed Bloods gang signs, and made
incendiary gang remarks to prison guards. It took a special team of officers to
remove him.
Yesterday, Garaufis directed prosecutors to submit a written response detailing
their views on the issue.
In 2007, Wilson was sentenced to death after a federal jury found him guilty of
the point-blank shooting deaths of NYPD detectives Rodney Andrews and James
Nemorin during an undercover gun buy-and-bust operation.
Wilson became the city's 1st federal defendant to receive a death sentence
since 1954, but an appeals court reversed the death sentence on procedural
grounds in 2010.
(source: New York Post)
****************************
White supremacy and mass incarceration ; Republicans join the Left in calls for
American prison reform but ignore the relevance of racism and social justice
In a 2011 opinion piece in the Washington Post, Newt Gingrich said, "There is
an urgent need to address the astronomical growth in the prison population,
with its huge costs in dollars and lost human potential...The criminal justice
system is broken, and conservatives must lead the way in fixing it." An
advocacy group called Right on Crime is spearheading Republican efforts to
"demand more cost effective approaches that enhance public safety." Signatories
to its statement of principles include, in addition to Gingrich, other notable
Republicans like Jeb Bush and Grover Norquist. A recent Washington Monthly
article celebrated the right's new focus on crime claiming it would "put the
nation on a path to a more rational and humane correctional system."
But by focusing on achieving "a cost effective middle ground," Republican
reform strategies end up eschewing the relevance of social justice and largely
ignoring racial disparities and the disruptive social costs created by mass
incarceration.
Justice and white supremacy
The travesty of mass incarceration and its devastating social effects and of
the malfeasance of American jurisprudence cannot be measured purely in terms of
economic rationality. It is an issue deeply entwined with long histories of
racial oppression and white supremacy. True reform will require grappling with
this larger problem.
A 1987 Supreme Court case illustrates what I mean when I say that the justice
system is saturated with racism. In McCleskey v. Kemp, the Court declined to
define the death penalty as racially discriminatory. The case involved the
appeal of the death sentence for Warren McCleskey, a Georgia man convicted of
armed robbery and the murder of a white policeman. In his appeal McCleskey
cited research analysing 2000 Georgia homicides over an 8 year period beginning
in 1972 that found black defendants were nearly twice as likely to be sentenced
to death as white defendants.
The research, described as the "most sophisticated study of the criminal
justice system in the 20th century," also found that the death sentence was
applied 4.3 times more often when the murder victim was white. McCleskey's
appeal (based upon the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection and the 8th
Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment), argued that the
death sentence was racially biased. Justice Powell, in the majority opinion,
accepted the general validity of the data and the likelihood that race was a
factor in death penalty cases, but wrote that in the specific case of Warren
McCleskey there was no proof of "the existence of purposeful discrimination."
In the analysis of Bryan Stevenson, Executive Director of the Equal Justice
Initiative (EJI), the Supreme Court's decision in McCleskey upholds the
constitutionality of the Georgia death penalty, even while it validates the
data showing clear racial bias. Stevenson summed up the case by arguing that in
McCleskey v. Kemp the Supreme Court viewed the problem of racial bias as "too
big" to confront.
Indeed, in the majority opinion Justice Powell wrote that "if we accepted
McCleskey's claim that racial bias has impermissibly tainted the capital
sentencing decision, we could soon be faced with similar claims as to other
types of penalty...[S]ince McCleskey's claim relates to the race of his victim,
other claims could apply with equally logical force to statistical disparities
that correlate with the race or sex of other actors in the criminal justice
system, such as defence attorneys or judges."
In effect, the Court declined to recognise that racism and white supremacy were
factors in the administration of justice. "The Court," Stevenson argued, "said
if we recognise disparities based on race in the administration of the death
penalty it's going to be just a matter of time before lawyers begin complaining
about race disparities for other kinds of criminal offences..."
McCleskey v. Kemp powerfully reinforced white supremacy in the administration
of justice by obscuring a long American history of systematic racial violence
and oppression, and normalising racial bias and racial disparities in
sentencing. Although the decision was a specific deliberation on racial bias
and the death penalty, its logic clearly ramifies throughout the entire
criminal justice system.
Race, class and incarceration
The US incarceration rate began increasing in the mid-1970s, but exploded
dramatically after passage of the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act. Between 1970 and
2005 the prison population rose 700 %. The US comprises only 5 % of the world's
population, but contains 25 of the world's incarcerated people. Over 7 million
Americans are entangled with the criminal justice system through parole,
probation or other forms of correctional supervision, while 2.3 million are
behind bars. At 730 per 100,000 the US prison rate is 4-7 times higher than
other western nations and up to 32 times higher than countries with the lowest
rates like Nepal, Nigeria and India.
Racial disparities among the incarcerated are glaring: one in every 36 Latino
man and one in every 15 black man is a prisoner compared with one in every 106
white man. 4 % of Native American adults are under correctional control. Data
comparing apartheid era black incarceration rates in South African with current
black male incarceration rates in the US provides a jarring perspective.
According to the Prison Policy Institute, in 1993, during the apartheid era in
South Africa, black men were incarcerated at a rate of 853 per 100,000 total
black male population. In 2010, under the Obama administration, US black men
were incarcerated at a rate of 3,074 per 100,000. As the law of the land,
McCleskey v. Kemp became an alibi for the racialised logic of mass
incarceration, obstructing recognition and elimination of blatant racism in the
criminal justice system.
Featured in the December issue of the Smithsonian Magazine, Stevenson was
described as "the most important advocate for death row inmates in the US,"
having successfully argued cases before the Supreme Court that banned mandatory
life sentences without parole for minors. Stevenson is an eloquent, soulful man
who sees the world through the eyes of imprisoned children and equates the
incarceration of African Americans in the post-Civil Rights era with the
enslavement of Africans in the US.
Mass incarceration, he argues, has radically changed society. He speaks of
urban communities, like Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Washington, where 50 % of
young black men are in prison, on parole or probation and where the
disenfranchisement of convicted felons "has horrific implications for the
political aspirations of people of colour." In Alabama, Stevenson said, 34 % of
black men have permanently lost the right to vote and within the next 10 years
the level of disenfranchisement will be higher than it has been since passage
of the Voting Rights Act in 1965.
Stevenson points to the consequences of the 1996 Welfare Reform Law which
denied drug offenders eligibility for public housing, food stamps and other
benefits, and that has had a disastrous impact on black women and children.
Black women comprise half of the female prison population, although they are
only 12 % of the total population. Between 1986 and 1991the number of black
women incarcerated for drug offences soared by 828 %.
It's not just racism in Stevenson's analysis that drives the shame of mass
incarceration. A class system defined by gross wealth and income inequality and
entrenched poverty also subverts the achievement of justice. "We have a system
of justice in this country," he said, "that treats you much better if you're
rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent." A racially biased war on
drugs, poverty and political disenfranchisement combine, Stevenson argues, to
create "a new class of untouchables, 1 million strong," who cannot be reached
by the public health or welfare systems and are "marginalised in ways from
which there is no recovery."
Using the institution of slavery as a lens through which to analyse the hugely
disproportionate incarceration of African Americans men, women and children,
Stevenson challenges us to question the logic of a justice system based on the
rule of McCleskey v. Kemp. Why are blacks more likely to receive mandatory
minimum sentences than whites? Why are 2/3 of those sentenced to life African
Americans? Why, according to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics, does a black
boy have a 32 % chance of going to gaol, compared with a 6 % chance for a white
boy?
Mass incarceration is a legacy of slavery
Stevenson and the EJI are prompting a discussion on justice, on American racial
history, and on slavery and the racism as foundational to the criminal justice
system. "America," Stevenson argued, "...became a society where slavery was a
proxy for caste, and value, and worth. So when you ended slavery, you didn't
end the presumptions about black inferiority. All those things carried
on...Until we have a conversation about that, we are going to continue to
replicate those dynamics." For Stevenson, it is clear that the justice system
is based upon both the myth of black inferiority and on the delusion of white
supremacy.
In a recent interview Stevenson described white supremacy as a tragedy because
"...generations of people...were raised and taught...that they were better than
other people because of the colour of their skin...There is nothing more
abusive that you can do to a child or to a community than to persuade them that
their worldview should be shaped by a lie, and that they should...interpret
everything through that lie. And because we haven't talked about that lie, a
lot of what we say and what we do reflects an identity that is complicated and
compromised by this history."
It is crucial for us to reflect on Stevenson's analysis that slavery and mass
incarceration are part of a continuum, part of a history of racial oppression
and white supremacy that remain entrenched in the legal system. This analysis
is especially critical at a time when Republicans are attempting to redefine
our carceral state without considering the role of race and racism in criminal
justice and American history. This nation's inability to face a past that
includes slavery and the lie of white supremacy severely constricts the
possibility of justice in the present and the future.
(source: Wende Marshall is a cultural anthropologist working on issues of race,
healing and social change and is the author of Potent Mana: Lessons in Power
and Healing; Al Jazeera)
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