Wednesday, Aug. 18, 2010

Death-row inmates seeking reprieve

Seven convicted killers claim racial bias under new law

Regardless of whether they're white, black or Hispanic, all seven of Johnston County's death-row inmates are claiming racial bias played a role in their sentences, and they want them changed to life in prison.

Last week brought court filings from seven men convicted of first-degree murder for crimes in Johnston - Johnny Daughtry, Tyrone Eugene DeCastro, Malcolm Geddie Jr., Angel Guevara, Mitchell Holmes and Davy Stephens. All are claiming that their race, the race of victims and the racial makeup of the jury played roles in their convictions and death sentences.

Last week was the deadline for death-row inmates to request that their sentences be reduced to life without parole under the fledgling Racial Justice Act, and at least 119 of the 159 death-row inmates in North Carolina are seeking such relief.

The Racial Justice Act passed last year after months of contention along party lines and much opposition from prosecutors, law-enforcement groups and victims-rights advocates. It is designed to combat racial disparities in death sentences and has prompted claims from white and black inmates.

The law allows death-row inmates and defendants in death-penalty cases to challenge prosecutions on grounds of bias. It also allows judges to consider statistics and anecdotal trends of racial disparities in death sentences to change a death sentence to life in prison without parole.

In the court filings submitted in Johnston County, lawyers for the death-row inmates cite a study by Catherine Grosso and Barbara O'Brien, professors at the Michigan State University College of Law.

The MSU researchers studied death-penalty cases in Johnston County from 1990 to 2009. Their findings suggest that blacks were more likely to be taken off juries by prosecutors and that the death penalty was sought - and used - more often in cases where the defendant was black (and/or) the victim was white.

According to the study, 52 percent of qualified black jurors were struck by prosecutors, while the rate for other races was 28 percent. In death-penalty cases involving a white victim, 29.7 percent of defendants were sentenced to die, while the death penalty was handed down in 5.2 percent of cases with a non-white victim. Prosecutors sought the death penalty in 51.2 percent of cases with a white victim and 5.2 percent of cases with a non-white victim. Also, they sought the death penalty for 87.5 percent of minority defendants but 44.4 percent of white defendants, the study found.

Lawyers for Bacote and several others wrote in the filings that "Johnston County has a long and infamous history of racial strife," citing as an example the Ku Klux Klan billboard that marked the entrance to Smithfield until the 1980s.

Here are some of the other claims made by inmates:

DeCastro, 45, was convicted in 1993 in the stabbing deaths of Leon and Margaret Batten at a mobile home park in the Bentonville community. Another man charged in the same crime, George Goode, was recently taken off death row and given a life sentence after his lawyers argued that the state's crime lab made mistakes in the case. Noting that only one black person served on the jury that convicted DeCastro, who is black, his lawyers are asking that he get life imprisonment.

Bacote, 24, was convicted in 2006 in the murder and robbery of Smithfield-Selma High student Anthony Surles. His lawyers wrote in their filing that jurors did not sentence him to die on the basis of premeditation and specific intent to kill, factors common in most death sentences. They wrote that only eight death-row inmates had been sentenced through that "felony murder rule" and that all were black. Bacote has an appeal pending before the N.C. Supreme Court.

Guevara, 46, was convicted in 1996 in the shooting death of Johnston County sheriff's deputy Paul West at Guevara's mobile home. West and Lt. Ronald Medlin, who was wounded, were preparing to serve an arrest warrant on Guevara when he shot them. Guevara's lawyers wrote that two-thirds of black jurors were excluded at his trial and that many area residents surveyed at the time of his trial said their opinion of him was based on his Hispanic ethnicity.

Geddie, 63, was convicted in 1994 in the murder and robbery of Clayton resident Reginald Dale Emory. According to his lawyers' filing, only one black served on the jury that sentenced him to die.

Holmes, 36, was convicted in 2000 in the robbery and murder of Dean Ray Creech at his home on Buffalo Road near Selma. No blacks served on the jury that convicted him, according to his lawyers, and prosecutors struck all the potential black jurors from the roll.

Stephens, 55, was convicted in 1995 in a drug-related shooting on Grill Road in the Cleveland community. The victims were Lynn Wright, Antwon Jenkins and Michael Jones. Stephens, a white man accused of killing two blacks, is an unusual case for the Racial Justice Act. His lawyers point to the MSU study, which showed that his case was rare because prosecutors supported all potential black jurors. "The state's exceptional effort to seat black jurors is explained by the exceptional racial circumstance of a white defendant with black victims," the lawyers wrote in the filing.

Daughtry, 46, was convicted in 1993 for raping and bludgeoning to death his ex-girlfriend, Jennifer Elaine Narron, at a home on East Davis Street in Smithfield. Daughtry is white, and so was Narron. Daughtry's lawyers cited statistics showing that defendants with white victims are more likely to get the death penalty. Also, their filing claims that his attorneys were denied access to some materials from the District Attorney's Office, Smithfield Police Department and the State Bureau of Investigation that the court had deemed "work product." They also claim that the SBI's DNA tests "were seriously mishandled."

The filings claim that Daughtry's lawyers didn't learn of evidence that could've pointed to Narron's boyfriend, Michael Hopkins, until after the trial. Hopkins, the filing says, was sleeping nearby during the attack, gave inconsistent statements to police and attacked a former girlfriend with a similar weapon just weeks before Narron's murder, Daughtry's lawyers claim.

The next step will be for the state's legal system to determine whether the cases can be handled en masse or whether each case will have to be considered separately. Attorneys for the inmates are pushing for the first option; prosecutors prefer the latter.

"Each one of these cases has unique facts and circumstances, and each one involves the most serious crime and the most severe punishment," said Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby. "To lump a bunch of them together would be like doing a Rev. [Sun Myung] Moon wedding, and it shouldn't be."