Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of June 1, 2020

NEWS (6/​5/​20) — North Carolina: The North Carolina Supreme Court has struck down the state leg­is­la­ture’s attempt­ed retroac­tive repeal of the state’s Racial Justice Act, restor­ing the rights of approx­i­mate­ly 130 death-row pris­on­ers to seek redress of death sen­tences that they had claimed were sub­stan­tial­ly affect­ed by racial bias.

The Court issued its 6 – 1 rul­ings in the cas­es of death-row pris­on­ers Andrew Ramseur (pic­tured, left) and Rayford Burke (pic­tured, right), hold­ing that ​“the retroac­tive appli­ca­tion of the RJA Repeal vio­lates the pro­hi­bi­tion against ex post fac­to laws under the United States and North Carolina Constitutions.” It remand­ed the cas­es to the tri­al court to con­duct hear­ings to deter­mine whether their death sen­tences vio­lat­ed the Racial Justice Act. 

DPIC will pro­vide a more detailed analy­sis of the Racial Justice Act rul­ing in the coming week.

NEWS (6/​5/​20) — Pennsylvania: Walter Ogrod was freed from prison after a Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas judge grant­ed a joint motion by defense lawyers and the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office to over­turn his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. Judge Shelly Robins New denied Philadelphia pros­e­cu­tors’ motion to dis­miss all charges against him, say­ing she lacked juris­dic­tion to do so, but reduced the charges against him to third-degree mur­der, mak­ing him eli­gi­ble for release on bail. Judge New direct­ed that Ogrod’s case be giv­en pri­or­i­ty on the homi­cide court cal­en­dar so that the Calendar Judge could rule on the motion to dismiss.

Ogrod had been wrong­ful­ly impris­oned 28 years, includ­ing near­ly 25 on death row, for the 1988 mur­der of a four-year-old girl. An inves­ti­ga­tion by the Philadelphia D.A.‘s Conviction Integrity Unit con­clud­ed that Ogrod was ​“like­ly inno­cent.” On February 28, 2020, pros­e­cu­tors entered a joint stip­u­la­tion with defense coun­sel agree­ing that Ogrod’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence should be vacat­ed. Prosecutors told the court that Ogrod’s con­vic­tion was a ​“gross mis­car­riage of jus­tice” marred by exten­sive police and prosecutorial misconduct.

NEWS (6/​5/​20) — Pennsylvania: Paul Jackson Henry III has been resen­tenced to life with­out parole in a cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing tri­al before a York County, Pennsylvania judge. The par­ties agreed to a bench resen­tenc­ing tri­al last fall after the court threw out a jury’s death ver­dict in a dou­ble-mur­der as a result of the jury’s fail­ure to con­sid­er undis­put­ed mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence in the case.

Judge Michael Bortner deliv­ered his ver­dict from the bench. He not­ed that Henry, a Marine vet­er­an who had been in New York City the day of the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center and had stayed in the city to help with the relief efforts, had no pri­or crim­i­nal his­to­ry and may have been in the throes of drug addic­tion at the time of the mur­ders. ​“We’ll nev­er know what prompts some­one to act so out of char­ac­ter,” Bortner said.

NEWS (6/​4/​20) — Florida: The Florida Supreme Court reject­ed three death-row pris­on­ers’ chal­lenges to their con­vic­tions and/​or death sentences.

In Valentine v. State, the court denied Terance Valentine’s post-con­vic­tion claim that his death sen­tence should be over­turned because it had been imposed under a statute that uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly required the tri­al judge, rather than the jury, to deter­mine facts nec­es­sary to impose the death penal­ty. The court ruled that Valentine had no basis to raise that claim because he had waived his right to a sentencing jury.

In Patrick v. State, in a case involv­ing the beat­ing death of a gay man who had offered Eric Patrick, who was home­less, a place to stay, the court ruled that Patrick’s coun­sel was not inef­fec­tive for fail­ing to strike a juror who had expressed bias against gays. The court said that Patrick’s lawyer had strate­gi­cal­ly decid­ed to accept the juror, despite that bias, because coun­sel believed the juror would be favor­able to the defense in the penal­ty phase of the trial.

In McDonald v. State, the court denied Meryl S. McDonald’s chal­lenge to his cap­i­tal con­vic­tion based upon a 2014 let­ter from the Federal Bureau of Investigation acknowl­edg­ing that tes­ti­mo­ny pro­vid­ed by an FBI foren­sic hair ana­lyst at McDonald’s tri­al in 1995 was false. The court ruled that the pros­e­cu­tor could not have known the tes­ti­mo­ny was false based upon infor­ma­tion in a let­ter that was writ­ten approx­i­mate­ly 20 years after the tri­al. The court fur­ther ruled that relief was unavail­able to McDonald under a the­o­ry of new­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence because the knowl­edge that the FBI ana­lyst’s tes­ti­mo­ny was inac­cu­rate would not have changed the out­come of the trial.

NEWS (5/​29/​20) — Alabama: The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld the death sen­tence imposed on James Osgood by a Chilton County judge in 2018 fol­low­ing the appeals court’s rever­sal of Osgood’s ini­tial death sen­tence. Osgood waived a jury for his resen­tenc­ing hear­ing and asked the court to sen­tence him to death. 

The court of crim­i­nal appeals reject­ed Osgood’s claim that his waiv­er had not been know­ing and intel­li­gent because, dur­ing jury selec­tion, the District Attorney and tri­al court repeat­ed­ly mis­rep­re­sent­ed the jury’s role as a mere ​“rec­om­mender” of sen­tence. He also argued that his jury waiv­er had not been vol­un­tary because the court had made it impos­si­ble to impan­el an impar­tial jury by per­mit­ting the pros­e­cu­tion to show poten­tial jurors a prej­u­di­cial crime-scene pho­to­graph of the vic­tim, deny­ing the defense a con­tin­u­ance it need­ed to ade­quate­ly pre­pare for tri­al, and deny­ing a mis­tri­al after the dis­trict attor­ney told prospec­tive jurors that Osgood had been sen­tenced to death at his previous trial.