[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----N.C., OHIO, COLO.

[Rick Halperin]

May 29




NORTH CAROLINA:

The truth about juries and racial bias


Fact: It is unconstitutional for people to be kept off a jury simply because of 
their skin color.

Fact: It is standard operating procedure in courtrooms across the country for 
prosecutors to keep African Americans out of the jury box, especially when the 
defendant is black.

And for the most part, courts don't do anything about it. Court rules say 
prosecutors just have to state a non-racial reason for weeding out blacks. So 
they do. Everything's fine, as long as they don't blurt out what is, in many 
instances, the real reason: Prosecutors prune blacks from juries under the 
commonly held presumption that they are more skeptical of law enforcement.

Why, it's true, some will say. Prosecutors are just using smart tactics. But, 
as the Supreme Court said in a 7-1 ruling last week, they're judging people by 
the color of their skin, a constitutional no-no.

The ruling came in the case of Timothy Foster, an African American death row 
inmate in Georgia. Foster argued that prosecutors in his 1987 trial aimed to 
strike blacks from the jury pool, leaving an all-white jury to decide his 
culpability in the killing of an elderly white widow.

Foster appealed, citing racial bias in jury selection. It was hardly an unusual 
charge. Inmates across the country make that claim. Georgia courts' response to 
Foster's appeal wasn't unusual, either. They said they saw no evidence of 
purposeful discrimination.

This despite the fact that Foster's team obtained prosecutors' files showing 
that they???d kept notes on their decidedly race-conscious jury tactics. Their 
jury pool list showed the names of blacks highlighted in green. They even had a 
legend indicating that the highlighting "represents blacks."

Their notes identified prospective black jurors as "B#1" or "B#2." The letter 
"N" (for no) also appeared next to their names. On juror questionnaires, 
someone had circled black jurors' race. They were even ranked - in case it came 
down to having to pick one of them.

Still, despite all of that, Georgia courts found that Foster had failed to show 
purposeful discrimination in jury selection. Chief Justice John Roberts called 
the flimsy excuses prosecutors offered "nonsense." The nation's highest court, 
clearly sick of the charades happening in trials across the country, blasted 
Georgia courts' acceptance of those excuses as "clearly erroneous."

The N.C. Supreme Court has heard appeals like Foster's in more than 100 cases, 
according to the Durham-based Center for Death Penalty Litigation. The court 
has never ruled that it found racial bias lurking beneath a prosecutor's 
race-neutral explanations for dismissing blacks.

Is that because no N.C. prosecutor has ever been guilty of it? Or because our 
state's high court, like Georgia's, is too readily accepting of the excuses 
offered for racially suspect jury selection tactics?

The Foster ruling shows just how real the latter possibility is.

(source: Editorial, Charlotte Observer)






OHIO:

Supreme Court to weigh death sentence for Akron killer of 2


The Ohio Supreme Court is weighing the appeal of a man sentenced to die for 
killing his estranged girlfriend and her new boyfriend.

Dawud Spaulding was sentenced to die in 2013 for the killings of 28-year-old 
Erica Singleton and 31-year-old Ernest Thomas in Akron in December 2011.

Court records show Singleton had a protective order against Spaulding at the 
time. The 34-year-old Spaulding received a death sentence for both killings.

The Supreme Court has scheduled oral arguments for July 12 to hear testimony 
for and against upholding Spaulding's death sentence.

A decision by the court won't come for several weeks after that, and any 
execution would be years off because of lengthy appeals and the state's current 
lack of lethal injection drugs.

(source: Associated Press)






COLORADO:

Time to abolish the death penalty


The article in the May 24 Camera , "Supreme Court upends all-white jury 
verdict," gives heartening news - but it does not do justice to the background 
of this victory. Stephen Bright, the lawyer who won this case, has been working 
for the poor and defenseless for over 34 years - for more on him, see 
www.atlantamagazine.com/news-culture-articles/after-u-s-supreme-court-victory-stephen-bright-wont-rest-his-defense-of-the-poor-and-the-powerless/. 
It was he who first inspired Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice 
Initiative and author of the recent award-winning book "Just Mercy," to join 
the fight to give real legal help to those on death row in the South.

As Bright told Stevenson during their first conversation, "Capital punishment 
means 'them without the capital gets the punishment.' " Both Bright and 
Stevenson believe deeply that justice and humanity demand the abolition of the 
death penalty, and if you are not yet convinced of that, read "Just Mercy." 
It's a live issue in Colorado, given recent cases of mass shootings.

Silvine Farnell

Lafayette

(source: Boulder Daily Camera)