Three years after Mr. Buck’s trial, then Texas Attorney General and now U.S. Senator John Cornyn identified six cases, including Mr. Buck’s, in which the state relied on testimony linking race to future dangerousness to secure a death sentence. The Attorney General supported new sentencing hearings for all six defendants, and five of them received new hearings. However, the State of Texas has not granted Mr. Buck a new hearing and is now pursuing his execution.

The U.S. Supreme Court  intervened before Mr. Buck’s scheduled September 2011 execution with two Justices agreeing that “our criminal justice system should not tolerate” a death sentence “marred by racial overtones.”

Over 50,000 people have signed a petition asking that Texas officials grant Mr. Buck a new sentencing hearing.  Please sign this petition now.

Picture from North Dallas Gazette

Opponents of the Racial Justice Act have been trying to restrict the law since its inception. Last year the legislature limited the use of statistics that could be used to prove racial bias and put a stronger burden of proof on the defendant. Despite these rollbacks, some inmates were able to receive reduced sentences under the Act. A judge in Cumberland County cited a Michigan State study of North Carolina when he reduced the sentences of four convicted murderers on racial grounds. The study examined cases between 1990 and 2010 and found that prosecutors had removed black people from capital trial juries at more than twice the rate of others.

The Senate already passed the bill to repeal the Racial Justice Act but now has to approve some small changes that were added by the House. The bill will then head to the desk of Governor Pat McCrory, who has already said that he will sign it. North Carolina hasn’t carried out an execution since 2006 due to various legal appeals. They have 152 individuals on their death row and this repeal bill will likely cause executions to resume.

“It’s incredibly sad,” said Representative Rick Glazier, who strongly supported the Racial Justice Act. “If you can’t face up to your history and make sure it’s not repeated, it lends itself to being repeated.”

Photo: North Carolina Legislative Building

Today the Chattanooga Times Free Press published an opinion editorial written by Marc that details his experience with us on Justice Day and highlights his concerns with capital punishment. “The time has come to re-examine capital punishment from a conservative perspective, in terms of the waste of tax dollars, the risk of executing innocent people and the system’s negative impact on victims’ families,” Marc writes. “Conservatives want to limit government’s power; we want to reduce the waste and excessive cost of government; we want to protect liberty. The death penalty has proven to be inconsistent with these values, and it’s time we all did something about it.”

We at TADP want to encourage anyone who is concerned about this issue to join us in this work. When our lawmakers understand that people from a variety of backgrounds, political persuasions, and perspectives all have concerns about how broken this system really is, then we will see change happen in Tennessee.

Photo: Marc Hyden speaking to TADP Justice Day participants April 3, 2013

Last week, death penalty proponents who had hoped to overturn SB 276, the death penalty repeal bill that Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley signed into law last month, announced that they failed to gather the required amount of signatures to petition for a referendum on the issue to be on the ballot in the November 2014 election. “The people of Maryland have spoken,” said Diann Rust-Tierney, Executive Director of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, in a press release on Friday. “Voters are standing behind the decision by their elected officials to abolish the state’s death penalty.”

Jealous wrote that his organization remains committed to working to abolish the death penalty elsewhere and pointed to strides that are being made in other states as public opinion on the issue continues to shift. “Our strategy is clear,” he said. “We will outlaw it in a majority of states, and then we will go to the United States Supreme Court and make the argument that the punishment is not only cruel by its very nature but also unusual because most states have passed laws against it.”

Photo: NAACP President Ben Jealous and Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (naacpphotos via Compfight)

In the first decision, McQuiggen v. Perkins, the majority agreed that a one-year filing deadline for those seeking a federal review of their state court convictions under a 1996 law may be relaxed if the inmate can provide compelling evidence of his/her innocence. Justice Ginsburg wrote that this exception “applies to a severely confined category”–cases in which no reasonable juror who heard the new evidence would have voted for a conviction. Ginsburg writes, “Actual innocence, if proved, serves as a gateway through which the petitioner may pass.” Of course, this seems like a “no brainer” and yet, there was dissent.

Justice Scalia wrote a “blustering” (Justice Ginsberg’s word) dissent to the majority opinion. This should not be surprising as he is the same Justice who wrote in 2009, “this court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually innocent.”

The second decision issued on Tuesday extended a ruling last year that allowed inmates to challenge their state convictions in federal courts based on an argument that their lawyers had been ineffective, even though they had not raised the issue in earlier proceedings.

Though these decisions are moves in the right direction, I find it deeply troubling that there are Justices on the highest court in our land who do not believe that actual innocence is enough to keep someone from being executed. Never mind that this system, or any system, simply cannot be relied upon to get it right 100% of the time. The only way to ensure that innocent people are not executed in this nation is to finally get rid of the death penalty once and for all.

Photo by Larry Downing/Reuters

In 2010, the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals granted McKinney a new trial after determining problems with his defense counsel that “rendered the entire proceeding fundamentally unfair.” At his second capital trial in April 2012, the jury voted 11-1 for guilty of first degree murder and his third capital trial last month resulted in another mistrial after the jury was deadlocked 8-4 for acquittal.

As this article that recently appeared in The Nation explains, McKinney’s case lacked any key physical evidence. “No gun was ever found. No blood was discovered on McKinney’s clothes. His car was sold at police auction two months after the crime, before it could undergo forensic testing. The case against McKinney hinges on eyewitness testimony—evidence whose extreme fallibility has become well-known since he was first convicted.”

We are thankful that after 16 years of being locked up, Timothy McKinney can finally go home to his friends and family. The state persisted in pursuing death for McKinney, wasting millions of dollars, and in the end, they got two retrials and a plea resulting in release on time served. We can and must do better.

(Photo of Timothy McKinney speaking with one of his attorneys courtesy of WREG Memphis)

Michael Morton, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1987 for the 1986 murder of his wife, Christine, spent nearly 25 years behind bars before he was exonerated in 2011. DNA testing finally revealed the real perpetrator. Morton’s lawyers discovered that Ken Anderson, the prosecutor in the original trial, had intentionally hidden evidence that could have helped Morton’s defense. Morton believes that if this bill had been in place before his trial then he would not have been wrongfully convicted. Since his exoneration, he has been lobbying for legislation that would help prevent this from happening to others.

“This is a huge victory for integrity and fairness in our judicial system,” said Perry, who gave the pen he used to sign the bill to a smiling Morton. Perry noted that it was fitting that he was signing this bill almost 50 years to the day since the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Brady v. Maryland, which requires that prosecutors give defendants information that is “material either to guilt or to punishment.” The new Texas bill requires that the prosecution hand over all evidence regardless of its materiality to guilt or punishment. The Morton Act is the first significant reform to Texas discovery laws since 1965.

Tennessee isn’t immune from the issue addressed by the Morton Act. In fact, many members of the Tennessee Committee to Study the Administration of the Death Penalty urged Tennessee to consider just such a policy. The Morton Act allows for both the prosecution and defense to access the facts in order to put on their best cases and would only make the system fairer. Perhaps Tennessee, a state that since 2000 has executed six and released four wrongfully convicted men from death row, would do well to follow Texas’ lead.

(Photo of Gov. Perry shaking hands with Michael Morton after signing SB 1611. By Marjorie Kamys Cotera of The Texas Tribune)

Next month will mark one year since Ndume Olatushani walked out of the Shelby County Jail after spending 28 years in prison (20 on Tennessee’s death row) for a crime the overwhelming evidence shows he did not commit. Yesterday, Nashville News Channel 5 did a great segment on Ndume’s story.

Nashville’s The Contributor, a twice-monthly street newspaper, also featured Ndume in their last issue, and Pursuit Magazine ran the first of a two-part series on Ndume last month. The next segment is due to be out soon. While he was in prison, Ndume taught himself how to paint and has created numerous beautiful pieces of art. His collection has been on display at Vanderbilt University’s Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center, and he is featured in the May issue of the Nashville Arts Magazine.

We are thrilled that Ndume’s amazing story is being told. His case illustrates just how broken our death penalty system is. As Ndume often says, he is free today not because the system worked, but despite it. And we’re so happy that he is finally free!

Photo of Ndume, his wife Ann-Marie, and their puppy, Jasper taken last summer at the TADP state office.

For several months now, I have been interning here at TADP. I am so grateful for the insight this experience has given me, and I am sad to be saying my goodbyes today. The main feeling I take with me, however, is hope.

In my short time here, we have seen years of hard work pay off. Just this month, Maryland became the eighteenth state to repeal the death penalty. Each state that repeals offers new opportunities for discussion across the country. Each small change takes us a step closer to the tipping point where it is no longer easy to pretend that there is unanimous support for capital punishment.  The conversation is growing and it will be for a long time to come.

Unfortunately, a number of events in the past year have brought to the surface the feelings that make it hard to feel safe enough to keep moving forward. Mass shootings, such as Sandy Hook Elementary, and bombings at the Boston Marathon bring back the grips of fear. The fear can become so great that it makes putting on more and thicker armor as our only protection. The death penalty can become part of that false armor, but it will never give us the real safety we seek. It cannot truly keep us safe because it is failing to give us real justice, deterrence, and closure.

I hope that the coming years bring us into a safer place. I hope that we continue to see positive ways to make victims’ family members, wrongly accused persons, and all members of our society safe. And, I believe that we will see these things happen because groups like TADP are working across the country to make us safe in a meaningful way. I am grateful to have been a part of it.

-Margaret

Photo by  Elvert Xavier Barnes Photography

The National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty (NCADP), sent out a message today assuring supporters that they are committed to fighting the reinstatement of the death penalty in Maryland. In order to do so, they, along with Maryland CASE, NAACP, and other partners that fought so hard for repeal, will need your help. They are calling on people across the country to join the National Action Team, as they will need phone bankers and bloggers as well as financial support to help uphold the victory that we all celebrated last week. You can pledge to help out here.

You can also help by asking friends and family members who are concerned about human rights and social justice to join the national movement. They can also sign up here to learn more and get involved in Tennessee. Together, we can move our state and our country away from the death penalty.