About 4 months from now, on Dec. 3, 2020, Pervis Payne, 53, is scheduled to be executed in Tennessee, after spending 32 years on death row.
Payne is an African-American who grew up in Tipton County, Tennessee, once one of the largest cotton-producing counties in the state. Both of his parents experienced first-hand life in the South under Jim Crow South.
On June 27, 1987, 20-year-old Payne was found at the scene of a crime: murder and attempted rape. The victims were a neighbor of his girlfriend and the neighbor’s 2-year-old daughter.
In court, Payne described what he saw as: “The worst thing I ever saw in my life.” Earlier that same day, Payne testified that he was waiting for his girlfriend at her apartment in Millington, Tennessee, when he saw a man covered in blood run out of the building. The man ran past him and dropped change and some papers while sprinting away.
Payne picked up some of these items before entering the building. He then noticed that the door to the apartment across from his girlfriend was open and he heard a noise. Upon entering, he encountered the victim, who had been stabbed 41 times and still had a knife stuck in her throat.
Payne tried to help. He also checked on the victim’s 2 young children, 1 of whom was still alive. He then immediately ran for help, just as police officers arrived at the apartment building.
In his testimony, Payne explained: “…I’m coming out of here with blood on me and everything. It’s going to look like I’ve done this crime.” However, is being at the wrong place at the wrong time a basis for the death penalty?
Furthermore, it is important to note that Payne has an intellectual disability, confirmed through testing. Thus, regardless of whether his conviction was wrongful, under the 8th Amendment it should be unconstitutional to execute him even if he were guilty. This amendment prohibits imposing harsh penalties and sentencing on mentally disabled defendants.
However, after certiorari was granted and the case moved to the Supreme Court, one of the key opinions was the principle of the punishment fitting the crime in question (the court established that the crime was a particularly aggravated and savage murder).
This case has had a lasting impact on victims’ rights. Legal scholars have cited Payne as a “capstone case” and as an example of symbolic violence—symbolic violence in the context of the oppression of women by men. This led to Chief Justice Rehnquist’s reliance on victim impact statements and the image of the perpetrator as a rabid animal with murderous and inhuman inclinations to justify the similar inhumanity of Payne’s death sentence.
Nevertheless, it is crucial to acknowledge the role of racial biases in Payne’s conviction. For starters, innocent Black people are seven times more likely to be wrongfully convicted of murder than their white counterparts.
Studies have shown that the race of a victim can increase the likelihood of the accused being given the death penalty. For example, since 1976 almost 300 Black people accused of murdering white people have been executed, which is about 14 times more than the number of whites executed for murdering other whites, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Payne grew up hearing stories of white men torturing and murdering Black men in the area, and it is in the context of historical biases that the prosecution repeatedly referred to the victim’s “white skin,” when speaking of the wounds inflicted on her.
Though being in the wrong place at the wrong time led, in part, to Payne’s wrongful conviction, ultimately the prosecution’s case heavily relied on racist stereotypes of Black men to portray Payne as a violent and a hyper-sexual drug user.
Moreover, Payne did not know the victim and there was no evidence that the crime, if committed by him, was premeditated—yet police and the prosecution argued that Payne had made a move on her while under the influence of drugs and alcohol. When she rejected his advances, they say, he stabbed her to death.
However, there was no evidence that Payne used drugs, and the police never gave him a drug test, even though his mother begged them to perform one. Furthermore, there was also no evidence of drug use reported in the initial investigation.
But the prosecution continued with this narrative: a young Black man became violent as a result of uncontrollable sexual urges and drug use. Payne had no history of drug use or violence and had no prior criminal record. He had no contact with the legal system prior to June 27, 1987.
This reliance on harmful and fallacious stereotypes of Black men, instead of on the facts or evidence, not only influenced the prosecution’s case but also played a role in Payne’s unfair sentencing.
Payne was (wrongly) convicted in February 1988. But, today, there is some hope. In December 2019, Kelley Henry’s team at the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Nashville re-opened his case. They subsequently discovered previously hidden evidence: a bloodied comforter, sheets, and pillow.
Besides the (il)legality of hidden evidence, this led to a huge inconsistency because the prosecution had established that the crime occurred in the kitchen. This evidence also included significant DNA material that could prove Payne’s innocence, and the Innocence Project joined in filing a request for DNA testing in Payne’s case.
Notably, in 2006, well before this re-investigation, Payne’s request for biological evidence was denied.
Today, Payne’s fight for justice continues. He has maintained his innocence for more than 30 years.
Despite no prior criminal record and a mental disability, as well as a lack of sufficient evidence and inconsistencies, Payne is still scheduled to be executed in Tennessee in less than 6 months.
Source: davisvanguard.org, Staff, July 25, 2020
Defense Seeks DNA Testing for Pervis Payne, Alleging Racism, Hidden Evidence, and Intellectual Disability Led to Wrongful Conviction
The Innocence Project and federal defenders have filed a motion in a Shelby County, Tennessee trial court seeking DNA testing of physical evidence hidden by prosecutors for 30 years that they believe will exonerate death-row prisoner Pervis Payne.
Payne, who is scheduled to be executed on December 3, 2020, has steadfastly denied committing the crime. The lawyers argue that his conviction and death sentence are the combined product of racial bias by a prosecutor’s office with an extensive history of misconduct and Payne’s intellectual disability.
Payne was sentenced to death in 1988 for the stabbing deaths of Charisse Christopher and her 2-year-old daughter and the attempted murder of her three-year-old son. Payne’s girlfriend lived on the same floor as the victims. He says he was on his way to visiting her when a man ran past him and, seeing the door open, he entered Christopher’s apartment and found her in the kitchen.
Payne said that when he heard police arriving, he panicked and ran from the apartment because he feared that the murders would be blamed on him.
Police focused their entire investigation on Payne even though he had no criminal record and no clear motive for the killings. They failed to investigate other suspects with a stronger motive such as Christopher’s abusive ex-husband or a local drug dealer who frequented Christopher’s apartment.
At trial, prosecutors played on racial stereotypes, characterizing Payne as a sexually predatory black man, high on drugs, who attacked a white woman. They argued, without evidence, that Payne had sexually assaulted Christopher, presenting a bloody tampon that they asserted he had pulled from her body. However, the tampon did not appear in any crime scene photos or video.
Police also claimed to have found evidence that linked Payne — who had no history of drug use — to drugs but refused a request by Payne’s mother, shortly after his arrest, that he be permitted to take a drug test.
In December 2019, when a court order provided defense counsel access to evidence held by the county clerk’s office, the defense for the first time discovered the existence of a blood-stained comforter, bedsheets, and pillow. Payne’s lawyers have asked for expedited DNA testing of this evidence. Assistant federal defender Kelley Henry, one of the lawyers who represents Payne said, “[t]he prosecutors illegally hid this evidence for three decades. That’s just wrong. … But there’s still time to save this man’s life.”
Payne is also requesting DNA testing of other crime scene evidence, including a tampon, bloodstained clothing, a weapon, fingernail clippings, and potentially a rape kit.
DNA testing was not yet available at the time of Payne’s trial, and the Tennessee courts denied a prior request to test the evidence, relying on a Tennessee Supreme Court decision that the court later admitted had misapplied Tennessee’s post-conviction DNA testing act.
The investigation and trial of Payne’s case — in the county that had the most known lynchings in the state of Tennessee and was responsible for nearly half of its death sentences — was repeatedly tainted by racial bias. While police were interrogating him, Payne later told his sister, they said to him: “you think you black now, wait until we fry you.”
Prosecutors argued that Payne had committed sexual assault and murder because a white woman had rebuffed his sexual advances. They also withheld key evidence from the defense and presented victim-impact evidence that flouted a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that had been issued just months before. The Tennessee state courts excused the constitutional violation as harmless and, after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, it rewarded the prosecution’s misconduct by overruling its prior victim-impact decisions, permitting Payne’s death sentence to stand.
In a statement, Innocence Project attorney Vanessa Potken said that “[r]acism, hidden evidence and intellectual disability were a recipe for wrongful conviction for Pervis Payne.” “The presence of DNA belonging to someone other than Mr. Payne,” she says, “would support the consistent story that he has told for more than 30 years: He was an innocent bystander who came upon the crime scene.”
Source: Death Penalty Information Center, Staff, July 24, 2020
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde