Race

On April 4, the Alabama House of Representatives voted 103-0 in favor of a bill to posthumously pardon the "Scottsboro Boys," nine black teenagers who were wrongfully convicted of the rape of two white women in 1931. The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 29-0, and Gov. Robert Bentley has indicated he will sign it. All but one of the group were sentenced to death by all-white juries with virtually no legal representation. The military had to protect them from angry mobs. They lingered on death row for years. Eventually, after several arguments in the U.S. Supreme Court on the right to counsel and proper selection of juries, all of them were freed without execution. Through the years of appeals, one of the women who accused the group of rape recanted and said the claim was a lie. Sen. Arthur Orr, a Republican sponsor of the bill, said, "Their lives were ruined by the convictions. By doing this, it sends a very positive message nationally and internationally that this is a different state than we were many years ago." The last of the group of defendants died in 1989. (photo: Brown Brothers, Sterling, PA).

A new study regarding the use of the death penalty in Harris County, Texas, was released in conjunction with the filing of an appeal by Harris County death row inmate, Duane Buck. The research was conducted by Professor Raymond Paternoster of the University of Maryland, who examined over 500 murder cases in the county. The study found that, in cases with circumstances similar to Buck’s and during the time in which he was tried, the Harris County District Attorney’s Office sought the death penalty 3.5 times more often when the defendant was African-American than when the defendant was white. When the cases were submitted to Harris County (Houston) juries, the net result was a greater proportion of African-American defendants ended with death sentences than white defendants. Buck's case is also controversial because an expert witness testified at Buck's trial that he was more likely to pose a future danger to society because he is African American, and hence more likely to commit violence. Read full study.

Texas death-row inmate Andre Thomas has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and auditory hallucinations drove him to gouge out both of his eyes. Nevertheless, prosecutors still believe he should be executed. In a revealing recent essay in Mother Jones magazine, author Marc Bookman described in vivid detail Thomas's family history of mental illness, substance abuse, and domestic violence going back at least two generations.  A brief excerpt from the article epitomized Thomas's delusions:  "On July 14, 2008, Andre managed to procure something sharp and slash a seven-centimeter gash in his throat, requiring eight stitches. He insisted that he was the cause of all the problems in the world, and that if he killed himself all the problems would stop. The next day, he reported that he had been reading his Bible and got confused because he wasn't sure if it was the voices or his own thoughts that were telling him to kill himself. During a psychiatric assessment one week later, he explained that 'The government is conspiring to read my mind. That's why I ripped out my right eye. That's the righteous side. They can't hear my thoughts no more. I cut my throat. Gotta shed a little blood to save the world.'" In the three weeks before he killed his wife and two children, police were asked to apprehend him and bring him to a mental hospital on two separate occasions.  After Thomas removed his second eye, he was moved to a facility for mentally ill prisoners, but the state continues to pursue his execution.

Lawyers for Kimberly McCarthy, who is to be executed on January 29, have petitioned Texas Governor Rick Perry for a 30-day reprieve because of evidence of racial bias in the county in which she was tried. The District Attorney for Dallas County, Craig Watkins, has already called for passage of a Racial Justice Act to address the bias he has found. Attorneys for McCarthy cited several studies pointing to racial disparity in the application of the death penalty: Dallas County is about 22% black, yet 42% of those executed or awaiting execution from the County are black. Ms. McCarthy is black and her victim was white, like 68% of the victims in the County's cases. Her attorneys wrote, “These statistics and their import are reflected in the case of Kimberly McCarthy, an African-American woman, who was sentenced to death for the murder of an elderly white woman." Evidence also exists of bias in jury selection, both historically and in her case: "Of the thirteen jurors seated [in McCarthy’s case], all were white except one.” Although the governor cannot grant clemency to McCarthy because the Pardons Board voted against her, he can issue a 30-day reprieve for further investigation.  UPDATE: State District Judge Larry Mitchell stayed McCarthy's execution.  Her new execution date is April 3, 2013.