Weekly Briefing

Innocent humans continue to be sentenced to death in our name

Yesterday's primary election offers several good reasons for civic-minded North Carolinians to feel a real sense of excitement and pride. For one, voters shattered all turnout records for a primary election. Indeed, as of the close of the new, one-stop early voting process this past weekend, around a half-million people (or almost 60% of the entire 2004 primary total had voted). By the end of voting yesterday, the total exceeded two-million.

In addition to the excitement generated by the Obama-Clinton showdown, these numbers are, in large measure, the direct result of the hard work of a diverse coalition of progressive advocates who fought long and hard to open up the state's voting process. When this exciting reality is combined with the prospect of new eras dawning in executive leadership at both the state and federal levels, it's hard not to have a sense of optimism about the state of politics and policy in the months and years ahead.

And then reality creeps back in. On Monday, the day before the election, a press conference took place in Raleigh at which yet another innocent man faced the media after having lost the best years of his life (and very nearly his life itself) as the result of a wrongful murder conviction and death sentence that had been meted out by North Carolina's flawed criminal justice system.

The individual in question this time is a 49-year old African-American man from rural eastern North Carolina named Levon "Bo" Jones. Jones, who has always maintained his innocence, was sentenced to death in 1993 for the murder of Leamon Grady, a white man.

According to a press statement issued by the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped represent Jones:

"A federal judge ordered Jones off death row in 2006 and overturned his conviction, declaring that the defense provided by Jones' initial defense attorneys was so poor that they missed critical evidence pointing to his innocence. After keeping him imprisoned in anticipation of a retrial, the Duplin County, N.C. District Attorney announced last Thursday that the state was dropping all charges and Jones would be released.

The sole witness accusing Jones of the murder, Lovely Lorden, admitted in an affidavit filed last month that she "was certain that Bo did not have anything to do with Mr. Grady's murder" and that she did not know what happened the night Grady was murdered. A new trial had been set to begin May 12."

Jones' release, of course, comes less than a month after a similar release took place at Central Prison. That case involved an innocent man named Glen Edward Chapman who spent 13 years on death row for a murder that occurred in Catwaba County. Chapman's release, in turn, came less than five months after the release of Jonathon Hoffman, who spent seven years on death row for a murder he didn't commit in Union County. In all, Jones is the fifth innocent death row inmate to be exonerated in the United States in the past 11 months and the 129th death row exoneree since 1973. Eight North Carolinians have now been exonerated from death row since the death penalty was reinstated since 1977. 

What the heck is going on?

Jones', Chapman's and Hoffman's cases are each indicative of what appears to be a growing (and overdue) crisis in the American death penalty. After three-plus decades in which the death penalty was applied with numbing frequency and a great deal of indifference from the general public, many who took it for granted are now having second thoughts. This change has been abetted by a variety of factors - not the least of which is the growing awareness and appreciation in the general public for the fallibility of the American justice system and the horror of executing an innocent person.

In Texas for instance, the undisputed death penalty champion, the state recently released James Lee Woodard after 27 years in jail for a murder he didn't commit. National Public Radio reported yesterday that Woodard's release is part of a broader review of a number of convictions obtained by the Dallas prosecutor's office.

In just a short amount of time, 17 out of 40 serious convictions have been overturned as the result of the examination of DNA evidence. According to Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins, the state's first African-American D.A., Dallas and a lot of other Texas prosecutors' offices have, in the past, had a sad history of not letting complex facts get in the way of obtaining convictions. "The political climate was being tough on crime," he says. "And the success of the DAs - it was considered to be very successful if you had a very high conviction rate, you sent a lot of folks to prison."

Dallas' experience, of course, mirrors that of numerous other states and jurisdictions in which a combination of modern technology and hard digging by enlightened journalists and advocates has helped to overturn several criminal convictions. As the fans of numerous television crime shows can readily attest, for all of the wonderful constitutional protections nominally guaranteed to all Americans accused of a crime, the system is far from perfect.

For a sizable group of disproportionately poor and minority defendants, the criminal justice system can still be a Kafkaesque nightmare - a place in which alibis and claims of innocence are blithely dismissed and the word of professional snitches and informants carries the day. When combined with the uncertainties that continue to accompany the way executions are actually carried out, the growing public awareness of this undeniable and sobering fact seems to offer some hope that Americans will continue to grow increasingly weary and suspicious of the death penalty.

Not out of the woods yet

Still, we still have a long way to go. Indeed, to hear death penalty supporters talk, Jones', Chapman's and Hoffman's releases prove that "the system works." After Chapman's release, House Minority Leader Paul Stam told a news reporter "In the last 10 years, we've provided maybe a dozen new procedural guidelines to make sure innocent people aren't executed." Now that such protections are in place, Stam thinks it's time for the state to proceed full steam ahead with executions. "Hopefully we will get back to executing murderers," he said.

Meanwhile, G. Dewey Hudson, the chief prosecutor in the Jones case contends that there was nothing wrong with his prosecution and conviction. "Law enforcement and I believe that Levon Jones received a fair and just trial and that he was rightfully convicted," he said in a statement released this week. Hudson made this statement despite Federal District Court Judge Terrance Boyle's 2006 ruling that Jones' trial was "constitutionally deficient" because of the inept representation he received from his court-appointed lawyers. As Boyle said at the time, "but for counsel's unprofessional errors, the result of the proceeding would have been different." 

In short, despite North Carolina's growing list of death row exonerees, many people remain undeterred. For these individuals, the prospect that North Carolina might commit the ultimate crime of putting an innocent human being to death in all of our names (or that the state has spent untold millions of dollars securing a few hundred death sentences out of more than 15,000 murders over 30 years) seems to cause no lost sleep.

Going forward

As North Carolinians sift and sort and celebrate last night's election results and record turnout, let's hope that they also keep in mind the fact that a lot of work remains to be done - especially when it comes to bringing the state's criminal justice system into the 21^st Century. Yesterday's turnout was wonderful and inspiring news, but as the day before Election Day reminded us, it will take more than just one election to banish the brand of cavalier thinking that gave rise to the Bo Jones' tragedy and continues to do injustice in all of our names.   

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 8:24 am and is filed under Weekly Briefing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.