Federal Judge Overturns South Carolina Death Sentence Because of Prosecutor’s Racist Arguments

A South Carolina fed­er­al dis­trict court has vacat­ed the death sen­tence imposed on Johnny Bennett, an African-American defen­dant con­demned by an all-white jury after pros­e­cu­tor Donald Myers (pic­tured) had ​“made mul­ti­ple state­ments clear­ly cal­cu­lat­ed to excite the jury with racial imagery and stereotypes.” 

Myers’ mis­con­duct includ­ed elic­it­ing irrel­e­vant evi­dence that Bennett had an inter­ra­cial sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with a white woman and that a white wit­ness whom Bennett had assault­ed when he was a juve­nile had dreamt of ​“being chased by black sav­ages.“ During clos­ing argu­ment, Myers also called Bennett — who was 6’7” and 300 pounds — ​“King Kong,” a ​“mon­ster,” a ​“beast of bur­den,” and a ​“cave­man.”

Judge Richard Gergel wrote that com­par­ing Bennett to King Kong reflect­ed America’s ​“long and ugly his­to­ry of depict­ing African-Americans as mon­keys and apes” and char­ac­ter­ized Myers’ racial­ly-charged state­ments as ​“a not so sub­tle dog whis­tle on race that this court can­not and will not ignore.” 

Myers has been chief pros­e­cu­tor for South Carolina’s Eleventh Judicial Circuit since 1977. Under his tenure, the cir­cuit has pro­duced 39 death sen­tences, more than any of the state’s 15 oth­er cir­cuits, sen­tenc­ing — and some­times re-sen­tenc­ing — 28 defen­dants to death. The cir­cuit’s death sen­tenc­ing rate of 6.8 death sen­tences per 100 mur­ders is the high­est of any cir­cuit in the state and 3.5 times high­er than the state aver­age. Myers per­son­al­ly obtained all of the death ver­dicts hand­ed down in the Circuit, although many have been over­turned, includ­ing sev­er­al for prosecutorial misconduct. 

Myers recent­ly announced that he will not seek re-elec­tion because he is approach­ing the manda­to­ry retire­ment age. His retire­ment announce­ment came less than a month after he was arrest­ed for drunk dri­ving, his third alco­hol-relat­ed charge since 2005. 

Judge Gergel also grant­ed relief on a sec­ond claim, hold­ing that the South Carolina courts had unrea­son­ably ruled that a juror who had referred to Bennett as ​“just a dumb n – r” was not racially biased.