deathwatch's blog

From the North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium:

Partners,

We are in a final push to have a vote on the NC Racial Justice Act in the North Carolina Senate. Here's how you can help:

1. Follow the link to write a personal email to each Democratic Senator in the legislature. Tell them the people of North Carolina deserve a vote on this critical legislation. Click here.
2. Forward this email to all your friends.

**YOU MUST ACT NOW AS THE LEGISLATIVE SESSION WILL END ON THURSDAY.**

North Carolina death row inmate Guy Tobias LeGrande has been found incompetent to be executed under both state law and the 8th Amendment of the United States Constitution.

After the jump, read a May 2007 post from my blog with more about Mr. LeGrande's mental state.

In a rare move, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals (which handles cases from North and South Carolina, as well as Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia) granted relief to death row inmate Dr. William Gray[FN] earlier this week. The Court said that Gray, who was sentenced to die for the 1992 murder of his wife in Lenoir County, should receive a new sentencing hearing because his lawyers failed to investigate and present considerable evidence that Gray was severely mentally ill.

Dr. Gray had been exhibiting bizarre behavior for months before he shot his wife. After he was arrested, he was kept in the state mental hospital for five weeks. Once Dr. Gray returned to the jail, he had to be kept in the juvenile cell block for his own safety. Everyone around him in the months before and after the murder noticed that Gray had made a precipitous decline into mental illness, but his attorneys – neither of whom had tried a capital case before - presented no such evidence to the jury. Now William Gray has a second chance.

Levon "Bo" Jones, recently released after serving over a decade for a murder he did not commit, held a press conference yesterday in Raleigh. Jones' attorneys spoke first. Ernest "Buddy" Conner told those gathered how the police failed to dust for fingerprints at the scene and eventually lost what little physical evidence they gathered. He also spoke of the State's star witness, Lovely Lorden, who unbeknownst to Jones' trial attorneys was a paid, professional snitch who changed her story several times before trial. Conner noted that this injustice could have been corrected years earlier had North Carolina state courts bothered to consider Jones' appeals.

For the second time in two months, an innocent man is being released from North Carolina's death row. Levon "Bo" Jones spent 13 years on death row after being convicted of the 1987 murder of Leamon Grady. Federal judge Terrence Boyle vacated Jones' conviction and death sentence in 2006 after finding that Jones' trial attorneys "utterly failed" to investigate the crime. (Read the Order here.) Duplin County District Attorney Dewey Hudson, who tried Jones in 1993, vowed to retry the case. This week Hudson was forced to admit that he has no evidence against Jones, and is expected to ask the court to release Jones today.

Help me out, BlueNC, font of information that you are.

I'm looking to expand my most recent blog post.

I know that Richard Moore "believe[s] that there is Biblical evil that lives among us, and for some crimes you give up the right to be here on Earth with the rest of us," (source) and that Beverly Perdue "support[s] capital punishment as an option, but...also favor[s] the current moratorium [then] in place while constitutional issues are being studied." (source)

How do your (least) favorite candidates feel about the death penalty?

In 1994, Glen Edward Chapman was sentenced to death for the murders of Tenene Yvette Conley and Betty Jean Ramseur. Earlier this month he was released from prison - all charges dropped - but with nothing to show for the last 14 years besides the clothes on his back and a pocket full of spare change.

People of Faith Against the Death Penalty has set up a fund to help Mr. Chapman adjust to life in the free world. All donations are tax deductible.

Send checks and money orders to:

People of Faith Against the Death Penalty
110 W. Main St., Ste. 2G
Carrboro, NC 27510

Please be sure to note "For Edward Chapman" on your donation.

In the summer of 1990, Minh and Linda Rogers were shot to death while working at their family-owned grocery in rural Gates County, North Carolina. Some money was taken. Sixteen year-old Linda was raped. The next year, Jerry Wayne Conner was tried and sentenced to death for the murders. His sentence was overturned on appeal, but after a re-sentencing hearing in 1995, Mr. Conner was again sentenced to die. In May of 2006, Conner came within 36 hours of execution before the North Carolina Supreme Court intervened. The Court didn't want Jerry Conner to be killed until he had the chance to apply modern DNA technology to the semen found on Linda Rogers' body. Unfortunately, the semen sample was too degraded to produce conclusive results.

As discussed in a prior post, Floyd Brown, an innocent mentally retarded man, has been locked up for 14 years without a trial. He has been held at the state mental hospital since 1993 in connection with the murder of an Anson County woman. Until the Supreme Court banned the execution of the mentally retarded, he was facing a death sentence. Two days ago, his attorneys filed a petition that could finally win him his freedom. Here's how you can help.

Imagine you have been accused of a crime you didn’t commit. Now imagine that you can’t defend yourself because your IQ makes you the mental equivalent of a five or six-year-old child. You can’t tell time. You can’t spell your own name. But somehow, police say, you gave them a lengthy and detailed confession to the murder of an elderly woman. You are facing the death penalty.

Fast forward fourteen years. You’re still in jail. You haven’t gone to trial. Both of the detectives who accused you have been convicted of federal racketeering charges. All of the physical evidence against you - if there ever was any - has disappeared. It’s not clear that you will ever get your day in court. There is a very good chance you will die in a state mental facility because you are too retarded to stand trial for something you didn’t even do.

On the bright side, the Supreme Court has outlawed the execution of the mentally retarded.