[Deathpenalty] Urgent Action 278/14 - USA: Race Concerns as Missouri Execution Nears

[Rick Halperin]

Nov. 6



MISSOURI:

RACE CONCERNS AS MISSOURI EXECUTION NEARS Leon Taylor, a 56-year-old man, is 
scheduled to be
executed in Missouri on 19 November. He was convicted in 1995 of a murder 
committed in 1994. There
are serious questions about the role of race in his case.

View the full Urgent Action, including case information, addresses and sample 
messages, here.

Leon Vincent Taylor was convicted of the first-degree murder of Robert Newton, 
who was shot dead on
14 April 1994 during a robbery of the petrol station he ran in Independence, 
Missouri. After the
jury was unable to agree on what punishment he should receive, the judge 
sentenced him to death
finding that the aggravating circumstances warranted it. However, in 1997, the 
Missouri Supreme
Court ruled that there should be a new sentencing due to improper final 
arguments by the prosecutor.
At the new sentencing in 1999, the jury unanimously voted for death.

Leon Taylor is African American. Robert Newton was white. The 1999 
re-sentencing took place in
Jackson County where the population was about 20 percent African American and 
where there was prior
evidence of discriminatory prosecutorial jury selection tactics as well as 
evidence that race
influenced prosecutorial decisions about which defendants would face the death 
penalty. The jury at
this re-sentencing was all-white after the prosecutor summarily dismissed six 
would-be African
American jurors. At the original trial, it had been a mixed jury (with four 
African American jurors
on it) that had been unable to agree on the sentence.

In 2002, the US Supreme Court ruled in Ring v. Arizona that the constitutional 
right to a jury trial
required that any finding necessary to enhance punishment be made by a jury. In 
2003, the Missouri
Supreme Court ruled that Ring should be applied retroactively, and subsequently 
commuted to life
imprisonment the death sentences of all Missouri inmates sent to death row 
before Ring as the result
of a sentence imposed by a judge after the jury was unable to agree on 
punishment. In other words,
if the prosecutor had not committed misconduct at the 1995 sentencing, Leon 
Taylor’s original death
sentence would have been commuted to life. Instead, due to the prosecutor’s 
misconduct, he was
resentenced by an all-white jury and this death sentence has stood.

Leon Taylor’s childhood was marked by parental alcoholism, violence, and abuse. 
According to his
lawyers, he has undergone positive personal development in prison and has 
become a force for
constructive relations among inmates and others. In 2001, Leon Taylor contacted 
Robert Newton’s wife
and daughter and expressed his remorse and condolences for their loss. Robert 
Newton’s widow has
since made statements indicating that she has forgiven him.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION  Black people and white people are the victims of murder 
in the USA in
similar numbers, yet 78 percent of the nearly 1,400 prisoners executed since 
judicial killing
resumed in 1977 under revised capital statutes were convicted of crimes 
involving white victims,
compared to 15 percent of cases involving black victims. Most murders in the 
USA are intra-racial,
that is, the alleged perpetrator and the victim were of the same race. Of the 
prisoners executed in
the USA since 1977, 53 percent were white people convicted of killing white 
people, and 12 percent
were black people convicted of killing black people. One in five of all 
executions since 1977 has
been of a black person sentenced to death for the murder of a white victim. The 
figure for white on
black cases is two percent. While such statistics on their own do not 
necessarily prove direct
discrimination, numerous studies have shown that race, particularly race of the 
murder victim,
continues to be a factor in the death penalty in the USA. On 29 August 2014, 
the UN Committee on the
Elimination of Racial Discrimination again called on the US authorities to 
“take concrete and
effective steps to eliminate racial disparities at all stages of the criminal 
justice system” and
called for a moratorium on executions.

View the full Urgent Action here.

Name: Leon Vincent Taylor (m) Issues: Death penalty, Imminent execution, Legal 
concerns UA: 278/14 Issue Date: 6 November 2014
Country: USA

Please let us know if you took action so that we can track our impact!

EITHER send a short email to uan at aiusa.org with "UA 278/14" in the subject 
line, and include in the
body of the email the number of letters and/or emails you sent.

OR fill out this short online form to let us know how you took action.

Thank you for taking action! Please check with the AIUSA Urgent Action Office 
if sending appeals
after the below date. If you receive a response from a government official, 
please forward it to us
at uan at aiusa.org or to the Urgent Action Office address below.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

Please write immediately in English or your own language:
  *  Opposing the execution of Leon Taylor and calling for his death sentence to 
be commuted;
  *  Expressing concern that he was tried before an all-white jury following the 
prosecutor’s
     peremptory dismissal of six African Americans from the jury pool;
  *  Noting that he would not now be facing execution but for prosecutorial 
misconduct at the first
     sentencing;
  *  Acknowledging the seriousness of the crime and the suffering caused.

PLEASE SEND APPEALS BEFORE 19 NOVEMBER 2014 TO:

Office of Governor Jay Nixon
P.O. Box 720, Jefferson City, MO 65102, USA Fax: 011 1 573 751 1495
Email: via website http://governor.mo.gov/contact/ Salutation: Dear Governor



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