James Tyrone Woodson’s death sen­tence was over­turned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 because the jury had not been allowed to con­sid­er any mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors in his life or about his periph­er­al role in the crime. The Court not only reject­ed Woodson’s death sen­tence, but held that a manda­to­ry death penal­ty sys­tem was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Woodson had been con­vict­ed in 1974 of first-degree mur­der, which was auto­mat­i­cal­ly pun­ish­able by the death penal­ty under North Carolina law. Woodson had been in a car dur­ing the rob­bery and mur­der, and he main­tained that he was threat­ened to assist with the rob­bery. Woodson and 120 oth­er death row inmates’ lives were spared because of the Supreme Court rul­ing. He even­tu­al­ly became eli­gi­ble for parole and was released in 1993. Since his release, Woodson has led a crime-free life. He used to be the kitchen man­ag­er at the Raleigh Rescue Mission. He now has a job in Raleigh and preach­es at Wake Correctional Center. ​“You have to want to change. Nobody can make you change,” he said recent­ly about his work help­ing oth­ers. He con­tin­ued, ​“There’s a choice in the mat­ter in life itself. Do you want to live? Do you want to be help­ful to anoth­er indi­vid­ual because you’ve been helped?”

(K. Carlson, ​“Former pris­on­er’s case changed N.C.‘s death penal­ty law, ” WRAL News, November 17, 2009; pho­to by WRAL News). Juries in North Carolina now choose between a sen­tence of life with­out parole or the death penal­ty; and any mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence can be pre­sent­ed on the defen­dan­t’s behalf. The case was Woodson v. North Carolina. See Supreme Court and Arbitrariness.

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