Marcus Robinson listens carefully to his audience of the Racial Justice Act in 2012.The News & Observer, Shawn Rocco / AP Photo
In 1994, Marcus Robinson, who was black, was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death for the murder in 1991 of Erik Tornblom, a white teenager, in the county of Cumberland, in North Carolina. He spent almost 20 years in the death corridor, but in 2012, his sentence was changed for life without the possibility of parole. He was one of the four detainees of the death corridor whose convictions were commissioned by a judge who concluded that racial discrimination had played a role in their trials.
The reason why their affairs were examined at all was because of a 2009 law in North Carolina known as Act of racial justice, This allowed the judges to reduce the death sentences to perpetuity without parole when the defendants were able to prove racial prejudices in their accusation, their selection of the jury or their sentence.
“Racial Justice Act guarantees that when North Carolina does not face the most severe pain in our state to our most heinous criminals,” said former Governor Bev Lost Lost said When she signed the bill, “the decision is based on facts and law, not on racial prejudices”.
At 21, Robinson was the youngest person sentenced to death in North Carolina. At the age of three, he was hospitalized for serious crises after being physically attacked by his father and received a diagnosis of permanent brain dysfunction. However, they were not the only disturbing aspects of his case.
“We continue to believe that the law on racial justice is an ill -conceived law which has very little to do with the race and absolutely nothing to do with justice.”
Racial discrimination in the selection of jury has been prohibited since its ban by the Supreme Court in its Decision of the Supreme Court of 1986 Batson c. Kentucky, But Robinson's trial was infected with it. The prosecutor in the case, John Dickson, disproportionately refused eligible black potential jurors. For example, he struck a black potential juror because the man had been accused of public intoxication. However, he accepted two “non -black” people with DWI convictions. Among the eligible members of the swimming pool, he struck half of the blacks and only 14% of non -black members. In the end, Robinson was tried by a jury of 12 people who included only three people of color – an Amerindian and two black individual.
Racial discrimination in the selection of the jury was not uncommon in the Caroline Northern Criminal Justice system. A complete study by Michigan State University examined more than 7,400 potential jurors in 173 cases from 1990 to 2010. Researchers found that state -of -scale prosecutors struck 52.6% of eligible potential black jurors and only 25.7% of all other potential jurors. This bias was reflected in the death corridor. Of the 147 people in the death corridor of North Carolina, 35 detainees were sentenced by fully white juries; 38 by juries with a single black member.
Under the law on racial justice, prisoners of the death of death had one year from When the bill has become law to file a request. Almost all the detainees of the corridor of the death of the state have filed complaints, but only Robison and three others – Quintel Augustine, Tilmon Golphin and Christina Walters – obtained audiences. In 2012, Robinson was the first. At the Superior Court of the County County, judge Gregory Weeks reigned this breed had played an important role in the trial and Robinson was sentenced to life without parole. North Carolina appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of the State.
An immediate outcry followed the decision. The Conference of District Prosecutors in North Carolina has published a statement To say: “The cases of fixed assets reflect the most brutal and the most odious offenders of our society. The question of whether the death penalty is an appropriate penalty for the loopholes should be dealt with by our legislators of the General Assembly, and not masked as () racism (of) racism. ”
The decision attracted a lot of advertising from across the country and Northern Carolina legislators were indignant. “There are certainly signs in the legislative file that there was [lawmakers] Who really wanted to see the executions move forward, ”explains Cassandra Stubbs, director of the Capital Sentence of Aclu who also represents Robinson.
The day of the Weeks judge condemned Robinson, the president of the Senate Pro Tempore for the state legislature, Phillip Berger, concerned with concern This Robinson could be eligible for parole. He suggested to Robinson – who had just been 18 years old when he committed crime and would not have been considered a minor – would be ineligible to life imprisonment without a chance of parole, citing a decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which prohibited minors from receiving life sentences without parole. “We cannot allow cold blood killers to be released in our community, and I expect the state to appeal this decision,” he said. “Whatever the result, we continue to believe that the racial justice law is an ill -conceived law which has very little to do with the race and absolutely nothing to do with justice.”
State legislature took up the challenge and voted to repeal Racial Justice Act in 2013. “State district prosecutors are almost unanimous in their bipartite conclusion according to which the Racial Justice Act created a judicial escape to avoid the death penalty and not a path to justice,” said Governor Pat McCRORY in a press release at the time.
Even if the law was still in force when the sentences of the four detainees were reduced, they were not yet sheltered from the death corridor. Robinson's condemned had been legally reduced, but the legal battle was just beginning.
In 2015, after almost two years after the initial hearing, the Supreme Court of North Carolina ordered the Superior Court To reconsider the reduced sentences for Robinson, Augustine, Golphin and Walters, saying that the judge had not given enough time to the State to prepare for the “complex” procedure.
Last January, the judge of the Superior Court Erwin Spainhour judged that because the RJA had been repealed, the four defendants could no longer use the law To reduce their sentences. “Northern Carolina has promised to explore an unprecedented look at the role of racial prejudice in the conviction of capital,” explains Stubbs. But now, “the state's legislature has turned explicitly from its commitment and has repealed the law”.
Robinson is back in the death corridor in central prison in the capital of Raleigh's state. In the Petition at the Supreme Court of the State, Robinson's lawyers emphasize that the double danger clause – the law which prevents someone from being judged twice for the same crime – which obliges North Carolina to try to reimpose the death penalty because the RJA 2012 hearing acquitted it with the sentence of immobilization.
“He was never sentenced to death,” said Stubbs. “They have no base to hold it in the death corridor.”
