Marcus Robinson listens intently to the Racial Justice Act hearing in 2012.News & Observer, Sean Rocco/AP Photo
In 1994, Marcus Robinson, a black man, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death for the 1991 killing of Eric Turnblum, a white teenager, in Cumberland County, North Carolina. He spent nearly 20 years on death row, but in 2012 his death sentence was changed. His sentence is life without the chance of parole. He was one of four death row inmates whose sentences were commuted by a judge who found that racial discrimination played a role in their trials.
The reason their cases were reviewed at all was because of a 2009 North Carolina law known as the North Carolina Law racial justice act, Which allowed judges to reduce death sentences to life without parole when defendants could prove racial bias in the charges, jury selection, or sentencing.
“The Racial Justice Act ensures that when North Carolina imposes the harshest punishment in our state on our most heinous criminals,” former Gov. Bev Perdue He said When she signed the bill into law, “the decision is based on the facts and the law, not on racial bias.”
At 21, Robinson was the youngest person to be sentenced to death in North Carolina. When he was three years old, he was hospitalized for severe seizures after being physically abused by his father and was diagnosed with a permanent brain defect. However, those were not the only troubling aspects of his case.
“We continue to believe that the Racial Justice Act is an ill-conceived law that has nothing to do with race and absolutely nothing to do with justice.”
Racial discrimination in jury selection has been prohibited since the Supreme Court banned it in a 1986 decision. batson vs kentucky, But Robinson’s experience infected her. The prosecutor in the case, John Dixon, disproportionately rejected qualified potential black jurors. For example, he beat up a potential black juror because the man had once been accused of public drunkenness. However, he did accept two “non-black” individuals with DWI convictions. Among eligible members of the group, half of blacks and only 14% of nonblack members struck. Ultimately, Robinson was tried by a 12-person jury that included only three people of color—one Native American and two blacks.
Racial discrimination in jury selection was not common in North Carolina’s criminal justice system. A comprehensive study by Michigan State University looked at more than 7,400 potential jurors in 173 cases from 1990 to 2010. The researchers found that prosecutors statewide struck 52.6 percent of eligible black potential jurors and only 25.7 percent of all potential jurors. others. This bias was reflected in those sentenced to death. Of the 147 people on death row in North Carolina, 35 inmates were sentenced by all-white juries. 38 by a jury with only one black member.
Under the Racial Justice Act, the prisoners were on death row One year from When the bill became law to apply. Nearly all of the state’s 145 death row inmates have filed claims, but only Robison and three others — Quintel Augustine, Tilmon Golfin and Christina Walters — have received hearings. In 2012, Robinson was first. In Cumberland County Superior Court, Judge Gregory Weeks Rule this race He played an important role in the trial and Robinson was sentenced to life in prison without parole. North Carolina He appealed the decision To the state Supreme Court.
The decision was followed by an immediate outcry. The North Carolina Conference of Domestic Lawyers issued a statement He said: “The death penalty cases reflect the most brutal and heinous criminals in our society. Whether the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for murderers should be addressed by our legislators in the General Assembly, not masked by allegations of racism in our courts.
The ruling attracted a lot of publicity from around the country and North Carolina lawmakers were outraged. “There are certainly indications in the legislative record that there are some signs [lawmakers] “They really wanted to see executions carried out,” says Cassandra Stubbs, director of the ACLU’s Death Penalty Project, which also represents Robinson. Members of the Legislature circulated talking points to lawmakers with arguments that the RJA turns “local attorneys into racists and convicted murderers into victims,” calling the law “a circumvention of the death penalty and an indefinite moratorium on the death penalty.”
On the day that Judge Weeks displeased Robinson, Senate President Pro Tempore of the state Legislature, Philip Berger, He expressed his concern That Robinson may be eligible for parole. He suggested that Robinson — who had just turned 18 when he committed the crime and could not have been considered a juvenile — would not be eligible for life in prison without a chance of parole, citing a U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting juveniles from receiving life sentences without a chance of parole. . Parole. “We cannot allow cold-blooded killers to be released into our society, and I expect the state to appeal this decision,” he said. “Regardless of the outcome, we continue to believe that the Racial Justice Act is ill-considered and has nothing to do with race and absolutely nothing to do with justice.”
The state legislature accepted the challenge and Vote to repeal Racial Justice Act in 2013. This made it impossible for death row inmates to even attempt to review their sentences due to racial bias, but left the fate of the four who were transferred to life imprisonment unclear. “The state’s prosecutors are almost unanimous in their bipartisan conclusion that the Racial Justice Act created a judicial loophole to avoid the death penalty and is not a path to justice,” Gov. Pat McCrory said in a statement at the time.
Although the law was still in effect when the four prisoners’ sentences were commuted, they were not safe from the death penalty yet. Robinson’s sentence was legally reduced, but the legal battle was only just beginning.
In 2015, nearly two years after the initial hearing, the North Carolina Supreme Court held The Supreme Court ordered To reconsider the reduced sentences of Robinson, Augustin, Golfin and Walters, saying the judge failed to give the state enough time to prepare for the “complex” proceedings.
Last January, Supreme Court Justice Erwin Spainhour ruled that because the RJA had been repealed, the four defendants He could no longer use the law To reduce their judgments. “North Carolina has pledged an unprecedented look at the role of racial bias in death sentences,” Stubbs says. But now “the state legislature has explicitly reversed its commitment and repealed the law.”
Robinson returned to death row at Central Prison in the state capital, Raleigh. In the petition to the state Supreme Court, Robinson’s lawyers point out that the double jeopardy clause — a law that prevents someone from being tried twice for the same crime — prevents North Carolina from trying to reimpose the death penalty because the 2012 RJA hearing acquitted him of the death penalty.
“He was never sentenced to death,” Stubbs says. “They have no basis to hold him on death row.”