Racism and the Death Penalty

Photos at the RJA vote (see below), and some of downtown Winston where I did my internship:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=113220&id=510568119&l=9187b60be9

In August I went to the North Carolina state legislature in Raleigh to watch the representatives (MPs) vote on the Racial Justice Act or "RJA." The RJA became law and made it illegal to execute a person where it can be shown that race was a significant factor in the decision to seek or impose the death penalty, either in that person's case or in cases generally in the State, county, prosecutorial district or judicial division where the person was charged. You'd think it would be pretty well established that a person couldn't be executed on the basis of a trial significantly influenced by racism, but sadly that isn't the case. What what I came to learn during my internship is that racism in the American South is still a major issue, particularly in death penalty cases. Lots of studies on have been made of this topic, but for example a 2008 study in North Carolina concluded that black defendants who killed white victims were 14 times more likely to be sentenced to death than white defendants who killed black victims. Since the re-institution of capital punishment in the United States, there have been over 130 exonerations of death row inmates, and most of these have been African-American.

I met and worked with Darryl Hunt, a man who spent almost 20 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, and who would have spent that time waiting to be executed if the jury hadn't voted for life imprisonment as an alternative. His case was so controversial that it was turned into a major documentary which won awards and nominations from Sundance to the Emmys. (See the trailer here: http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1928659225/ Mr Hunt, an African American, was charged with the rape and murder of Deborah Sykes, a white woman, in 1984. A witness reported seeing Ms Sykes with "an African-American man" on the morning of the crime and tentatively identified Mr Hunt as the man he had seen. Another witness identified a different man in a first photo lineup, but after Mr Hunt had been identified as a suspect, this witness changed his mind and claimed it was Mr Hunt he had seen as well. Despite numerous inconsistencies, evidential flaws and dubious prosecutorial techniques, Mr Hunt was convicted. Several appeals were launched, and in 1994, Mr. Hunt's attorney, who I worked for in Winston-Salem, requested that new DNA testing be done on evidence from the crime scene. The DNA test excluded Mr. Hunt as the contributor of the DNA found on the victim. Despite this, the courts ruled this evidence did not prove he was innocent and it was to be a further 10 years before he would be released. In 2003 the DNA profile from evidence from the crime scene was run through the State's database. The DNA matched a man in prison for another murder, who subsequently confessed to the Deborah Sykes’ rape and murder. Mr. Hunt was finally exonerated and was eventually officially pardoned in 2004. One of the things that struck me most when I met him was how his experience hasn't made him at all bitter. When he was released, he set up the Darryl Hunt Project to help convicted felons find work, housing, healthcare etc when they are released from jail - things that would usually be extremely hard to come by for them. He also travels around the country giving talks to students and various law enforcement conferences talking about the case and hopefully preventing the mistakes that were made with him being repeated. He's an absolutely lovely guy, unassuming, modest and very affable. If you can get your hands on the documentary it's well worth a watch.