The North Carolina Supreme Court on Friday vacated the death sentence of Marcus Reymond Robinson of Fayetteville, who in 2012 was the 1st of 4 people to use the state's controversial Racial Justice Act to be removed from death row.
Robinson is in prison for the murder and robbery of 17-year-old Erik Tornblom in Fayetteville in 1991.
The Racial Justice Act of 2009 allowed death row inmates to petition the courts to review whether racial bias in the criminal justice system influenced their trials and the jury decisions to sentence them to death.
It was lauded by some for its effort to address decades of systemic racism in the criminal justice system and criticized by others as part of a long-term effort to abolish the death penalty.
Robinson and three other defendants used the Racial Justice Act in 2011 and 2012 to persuade Cumberland County Superior Court Judge Greg Weeks that the prosecutors in their murder trials were racially biased in their selection of jurors — that they used their power to strike potential jurors to keep Blacks off the juries under a premise that a Black person would be less likely to convict or vote for a death sentence.
Weeks in 2012 re-sentenced Robinson and the other 3 defendants from Fayetteville-area homicides to life in prison without parole, and they were removed from death row.
The legislature, citing these cases, repealed the Racial Justice Act in 2013, but the 4 remained off death row until the Supreme Court in late 2015 ruled that Weeks made errors at the Racial Justice Act hearings in 2011 and 2012 and the cases need to be done over. The defendants were returned to death row.
In 2017, Superior Court Judge W. Edwin Spainhour said the defendants could no longer use the Racial Justice Act because it had been repealed.
Friday's 4-3 ruling, with the majority opinion written by Chief Justice Cheri Beasley, overturns Spainhour.
Beasley said Robinson's constitutional right against double jeopardy was violated when his death sentence was re-imposed in 2016. Once a death penalty is canceled, she said, court precedents say it cannot be put back on a defendant.
She said Robinson's sentence should be life in prison without parole as specified when the Racial Justice Act was enacted in 2009.
Friday’s decision could allow the other 3 Racial Justice Act defendants to also come off death row, said Associate Justice Paul Newby in a pointed dissent.
Newby contends that Beasley misapplied precedent and law in her arguments that double jeopardy applied to Robinson’s death sentence.
Source: Fayetteville Observer, Staff, August 15, 2020
NC death row inmate to serve life in prison, court rules
A man on death row in North Carolina will soon have his sentence reduced to life without parole, the state Supreme Court ruled on Friday.
Marcus Robinson is 1 of 4 inmates to initially get death penalty sentences reduced using the legal process outlined in the now-defunct Racial Justice Act.
The 2009 law allowed death row inmates to receive life without parole if they could prove through an appeals process that racial bias was the reason or a significant factor for their death sentence. The North Carolina General Assembly amended the Racial Justice Act in 2012 and then repealed the law the following year.
The Supreme Court ruled earlier this summer that the repeal of the law cannot be applied retroactively. This paves the way for more than 100 death row inmates to get the relief they sought while the 2009 law was in place.
In a dissenting opinion, Senior Associate Justice Paul Newby argued that the narrow 4—3 ruling in Robinson's favor could soon apply to Quintel Augustine, Christina Walters and Tilmon Golphin, all of whom have pending cases with the state Supreme Court.
“This Court’s decision today would seem to control the outcome of these cases as well,” Newby wrote.
Cassandra Stubbs, who represented Robinson and serves as director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Capital Punishment Project, called the court's decision “a strong condemnation of racial bias in capital cases” and praised the majority of justices who decided to reduce Robinson's sentence.
“I’m very pleased for him and his family that he will be safe from the threat of any additional proceeding and the threat of a death sentence," Stubbs said.
Attorney General Josh Stein's office said it is still reviewing the court's decision.
The Cumberland County Superior Court had sentenced Robinson to death for the June 1991 slaying of 17-year-old Erik Tornblom. Robinson was 18 years old at the time. In 2012, he became the first death row inmate to successfully use North Carolina's Racial Justice Act to lower his sentence to life without parole. His death sentence was then reinstated after the law was nullified.
The Supreme Court's ruling on Friday written by Chief Justice Cheri Beasley reinstates Robinson's life without parole sentence and argues he cannot face the death penalty again because he had already won his appeal under the Racial Justice Act.
“The question is whether we will hold onto a punishment that is unfair and discriminatory,” Stubbs said. “When you look at Marcus’s life, there’s no question he was not the worst of the worst and did not deserve the death penalty.”
Source: The Associated Press, Staff, August 15, 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
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