Death-Penalty News and Developments for the Week of March 8 — March 142020

NEWS (3/​13) — North Carolina: The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission vot­ed 5 – 3 to empan­el a three-judge review com­mit­tee to deter­mine whether four men con­vict­ed as teens should be exon­er­at­ed of the mur­der of NBA star Chris Paul’s grand­fa­ther, Nathaniel Jones. A fifth teen con­vict­ed in the mur­der died before he could sub­mit his case for review by the Commission.

Nathaniel Cauthen and his younger broth­er, Rayshawn Banner were charged and con­vict­ed of first-degree mur­der and sen­tenced to life with­out parole. Christopher Bryant, Jermal Tolliver, and Dorrell Brayboy were con­vict­ed of sec­ond-degree mur­der and sen­tenced to up to 14 years in jail. With the excep­tion of Banner, who was 14 years old, the boys were 15 when they were accused of the mur­der. Bryant and Tolliver were released in 2017 and Brayboy was released in 2018. Brayboy was stabbed to death out­side a super­mar­ket in 2019 before he could sub­mit his appli­ca­tion for the Commission to review his case.

The boys claimed they had been coerced by police into false­ly con­fess­ing, includ­ing being threat­ened with the death penal­ty, which was not a legal pun­ish­ment because of their age. Police reports omit­ted any ref­er­ence to those threats, However, dur­ing the Commission hear­ings, police admit­ted hav­ing invoked the death penal­ty as an inter­view tech­nique when ques­tion­ing two of the boys. The Commission found suf­fi­cient evi­dence of fac­tu­al inno­cence” to ask the pan­el of judges to review the case. 


NEWS (3/​12) — Arkansas: The Arkansas Supreme Court has ruled that death-row pris­on­er Jerry Lard, who lawyers say is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled, may waive his post-conviction appeals.

Lard’s ini­tial post-con­vic­tion lawyer was per­mit­ted to with­draw from the case cit­ing irrepara­ble harm” to the attor­ney-client rela­tion­ship after he had pre­sent­ed evi­dence that Lard was intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. The court appoint­ed new coun­sel to rep­re­sent Lard, who then asked the tri­al court to with­draw his appeals. The tri­al court grant­ed the motion to waive the appeals and the appeals court affirmed that ruling.

However, the court not­ed that a per­son who has intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty may not be exe­cut­ed, but declined to rule on Lard’s intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty claim, say­ing it is not ripe in the absence of an execution date. 


NEWS (3/​12) — Florida: The Florida Supreme Court has denied death-row pris­on­er Hector Sanchez-Torress post-con­vic­tion chal­lenge to his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence for a 2008 armed rob­bery and mur­der. In an unsigned opin­ion, the court ruled that Sanchez-Torres’s coun­sel had not been inef­fec­tive in advis­ing him to plead guilty to the charges and to waive a sen­tenc­ing jury based on coun­sel’s belief that a Clay County jury would absolute­ly con­vict [him] of first-degree mur­der and give him death based on the facts of the case.”


NEWS (3/​12) — Federal Death Penalty: Citing a 14-year delay by fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors in bring­ing the case to tri­al, a fed­er­al dis­trict court in Texas has dis­missed a fed­er­al cap­i­tal mur­der indict­ment against a Salvadoran man charged with killing two Honduran immigrants. 

The indict­ment alleges that the two vic­tims were being held for ran­som by a human-smug­gling oper­a­tion and that Wilmar Rene Gomez-Duran had tor­tured and mur­dered them after they tried to escape. Senior Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt (pic­tured) of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas dis­missed the charges with prej­u­dice, say­ing that inex­cus­able delays by the pros­e­cu­tion had made it impos­si­ble for Gomez-Duran to defend against the charges. Hoyt wrote that the integri­ty, effi­cien­cy and cen­tral­i­ty of the rule of law and good con­science dictates dismissal.”

The office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Texas has appealed the ruling. 


NEWS (3/​11) — Texas: The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has reject­ed the rec­om­men­da­tion of an El Paso County tri­al court that death-row pris­on­er Rigoberto Avila should be grant­ed a new tri­al as a result of the pros­e­cu­tion’s reliance on false and out­dat­ed sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence. Avila was sen­tenced to death for the alleged mur­der of a 19-month-old infant based upon what he con­tend­ed was false expert tes­ti­mo­ny that he had abused the child. New evi­dence indi­cat­ed that the child’s fatal injuries were the result of an acci­dent. In an unsigned opin­ion, the appeals court reject­ed the tri­al court’s find­ings regard­ing the cause of death and wrote that Avila had failed to meet the “‘Herculean’ bur­den to prove by clear and con­vinc­ing evi­dence that no rea­son­able juror would have con­vict­ed him based on the new evidence.”


NEWS (3/​10) — Utah: A Utah fed­er­al dis­trict court has grant­ed a new tri­al to death-row pris­on­er Von Taylor based on defense coun­sel’s inef­fec­tive­ness in fail­ing to inves­ti­gate the facts before advis­ing him whether to plead guilty. Taylor pled guilty to a dou­ble mur­der and was sen­tenced to death based upon the mis­tak­en belief that he had killed the two vic­tims. Because of coun­sel’s fail­ure to inves­ti­gate, Taylor was unaware of bal­lis­tics evi­dence indi­cat­ing that his co-defen­dant, not Taylor, had fired the shots that killed the vic­tims. The court found that Taylor had plead­ed guilty to two cap­i­tal mur­ders based on inex­cus­ably unin­formed advice from coun­sel which then exposed him to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of execution.”