Death penalty opponents have renewed calls to repeal state-supported executions and to commute the sentences of all death row inmates to life in prison, in the wake of a scathing audit of the State Bureau of Investigation.
The audit, released last week, found flawed laboratory work in the cases of death row inmates, including three who had been executed before the revelation came to light.
"I was flabbergasted; I could not believe it," said Ken Rose, an attorney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in Durham.
The troubling findings come on the heels of new studies by researchers at the Michigan State University school of law, the University of Colorado in Boulder and Northeastern University in Boston that show racial disparities in the trials and sentencing of death row inmates.
This month, under the fledgling Racial Justice Act, all but a dozen of the 159 inmates on North Carolina's death row used the historic law to request that their sentences be converted to life without possibility of parole because of racial bias in their trials and sentencing.
"None of us can be confident the results in any of these cases are fair or reliable," Rose said.
"The danger in executing these persons is too great. What I think should happen is the governor should commute all the sentences of persons on death row to life without possibility of parole."
Gov. Bev Perdue, a death penalty supporter, has not responded to calls for repeal of the state's harshest punishment. Nor has she commented on the new push for her to use her power as governor to commute all current death sentences to life without parole.
"No matter which issue you pick - the death penalty or the crime lab procedures - the governor believes one principle must override all others: fairness," Chrissy Pearson, a Perdue spokeswoman, said in an e-mail response.
None of the racial bias claims filed under the year-old Racial Justice Act, one of only two laws of its kind in the country, has gone before a judge.
The deadline for death row inmates to file claims was Aug. 10, and according to the latest count by the State Attorney General's office, 147 inmates - 82 black, 53 white and 12 of other races - are seeking relief.
'Grab the "rope" '
One of the first inmates to file was Guy Tobias LeGrande, a mentally ill man condemned to death in Stanly County after a jury spent less than an hour deliberating his case.
As LeGrande, a black man, was on trial for his life before an all-white jury, the prosecutor wore a noose-shaped pin on his lapel as he urged jurors to string together evidence investigators had gathered and "grab the 'rope,' " according to the death row inmate's Racial Justice Act claim.
LeGrande's lawyers say the trial was laced with racial slurs and epithets, and was reminiscent of one that might have occurred in the 1920s or 1930s, an era of legal lynching in North Carolina.
LeGrande, who was convicted of murdering Ellen Munford, a white woman, on July 27, 1993, received the state's harshest sentence. His white co-defendant, Tommy Munford, was the victim's estranged husband.
Tommy Munford was described in the trial as the mastermind of the plot to kill his wife and reap the rewards from a $50,000 life insurance policy.
He was allowed to plead to second-degree murder.
Prosecutors contend that the race of defendants and victims plays no part in their decisions to seek the death penalty or settle for pleas. Many also disagree with assertions that all-white juries cannot deliberate and render verdicts without bringing racial bias into their decisions.
Jim Coleman, a Duke University law professor, says all-white juries might not intentionally bring racial bias into their deliberations, but some cultural innuendo could easily be lost on juries made up of only one race.
To illustrate his point, Coleman said the Duke Wrongful Convictions Clinic recently helped win the exoneration of Shawn Massey, a black man convicted of several serious crimes. It happened after the law students were able to show that the white victim and white police officers and prosecutors had been confused about the defendant's distinctive African-American hairstyle.
"We all are limited by our experiences," Coleman said.
Rep. Paul Stam, a Republican from Apex and leader of the House minority, has been critical of the claims filed under the Racial Justice Act.
North Carolina has not executed an inmate since August 2006.
For roughly three years, a push to stop doctors from assisting in executions and a lawsuit filed by some death row inmates challenging the use of lethal injections as cruel and unusual punishment have led to a de facto moratorium on executions.
The time that it will take to hear the new bias claims in court, Stam said, would essentially create another de facto moratorium on the death penalty.
"No one will actually get relief under the act because actual racial discrimination has been illegal for decades, and those with actual evidence that they have been discriminated against have been able to present those claims in court without this act," Stam said recently.
Diminished faith
The People of Faith Against the Death Penalty, an organization based in Chapel Hill, plans to gather in Raleigh on Monday to further their calls for repeal of the death penalty.
In response to information contained in the many Racial Justice Act bias claims and the SBI audit, the Rev. William Barber, head of the state NAACP chapter, has called for prayer, reflection and change. Last week, Barber sent a letter to the governor; Roy Cooper, the state attorney general who oversees the SBI; and key leaders in the state legislature and courts.
"The back-to-back revelations of bias in this long hot summer have caused our faith in these 'justice' systems to dip to a new low," Barber said in his letter. "For those of us who view the system through a lens molded by the dark and gloomy past of legalized racial discrimination, these revelations are a disturbing reminder of the old times that are not forgotten.
"... While the primary victims of the abuse and corruption described in these recent studies are racial minorities, every citizen in this state has been hurt and remains as a potential victim."
