Death Penalty News

The North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty met Sunday afternoon at The Church on Morgan in downtown Raleigh.  There, advocates called for Gov. Roy Cooper to commute all death sentences in North Carolina before he leaves office. Rev. Sharon Risher lost her mother and 2 cousins in 2015 during the Charleston shooting, when 21-year-old Dylann Roof killed nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Inside the push to persuade Cooper to commute the death sentences of 136 people before he leaves office Every night one of his neighbors was scheduled to be executed by the state of North Carolina, Glen Edward “Ed” Chapman would look up at the window slit in his cell and say to the black sky, “I’ll see you again.” Saying goodbye was hard. Chapman and his peers who were also condemned to die formed a small community within the prison system. And whenever the state executed someone, that community would shrink by one member.

Death-row exoneree Robert DuBoise is suing the City of Tampa, four Tampa police officers, and the forensic odontologist who falsely testified against him, alleging that they fabricated evidence that led to his wrongful conviction and death sentence.  DuBoise was exonerated in August 2020 after a Conviction Integrity Unit reviewed his case and new DNA evidence excluded him as the perpetrator of the rape and murder for which he was wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death 37 years earlier.  DuBoise’s conviction was based on junk-science bite-mark evidence and false testimony from a prison informant. DuBoise’s attorney, Dan Marshall of the Human Rights Defense Center, said, “This case is a prime example of what can go wrong when the police do not use proper procedures. An innocent man goes to jail for decades.” The lawsuit alleges that four officers who were involved in the original investigation conspired with Dr. Richard Souviron, the forensic odontologist, to present fabric...

In February 2007, Hasson Jamaal Bacote was 19 years old when he and another man broke into a home in Selma, North Carolina, in an attempted robbery.  Six people were inside, including 18-year-old Anthony Surles, a senior at Smithfield-Selma High School. Surles was shot and killed. Surles’ murder wasn’t premeditated, but based on Bacote’s already lengthy teenage criminal rap sheet, Bacote was sentenced to death by lethal injection in 2009. More than a decade later, Bacote’s case is back in court, thanks to a 2020 ruling from the North Carolina Supreme Court mandating that petitions of more than 100 death row inmates be heard by the courts due to evidence of racial bias in jury selection under the state’s Racial Justice Act. Not only does Bacote’s life depend on the outcome, but so does the future of the death penalty in North Carolina. “I don’t know that there’s a weaker case for the death penalty than Mr. Bacote,” says Gretchen Engel, executive director of The Center for Death Pena...

Lawyers representing 2 former North Carolina sheriff’s deputies agreed on Friday to a $9 million settlement with 2 intellectually disabled half brothers who spent decades behind bars after being wrongfully convicted in the 1983 killing of an 11-year-old girl. The lawyers for former Robeson County Sheriff’s Office deputies James Locklear and Kenneth Sealey agreed in federal court to the settlement with Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, who will split the settlement between them, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported. County Attorney Rob Davis said in an email to the newspaper that the insurance companies that cover the sheriff's office will pay the settlement. The settlement ends half of the civil case. Lawyers representing 2 former N.C. State Bureau of Investigation agents have not settled, and closing arguments in the civil case were set to continue for that part of the case on Friday. The town of Red Springs, originally named in the civil suit, settled in 2017 for $1 million. ...

The North Carolina state bar has suspended the law license of a lawyer whose predatory representation of 2 intellectually disabled death-row exonerees defrauded them of hundreds of thousands of dollars. After a multi-day disciplinary hearing beginning March 15, 2021, a 3-member panel of the North Carolina State Bar Disciplinary Hearing Commission suspended Patrick Megaro’s license to practice law in the state for 5 years. The panel also ordered Megaro to repay half-brothers Henry McCollum and Leon Brown $250,000 in fees he had charged them in connection with their application for compensation for their wrongful convictions for the 1983 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl. The men — whose IQs in the 50s place them in the bottom third of a percent of the population in intellectual functioning — were sentenced to death after falsely confessing to the murder during hours of coercive police interrogations conducted without counsel or their parents being present. McCollum was 19 years old...

Florida lawyer Patrick Megaro is facing an official complaint by the North Carolina State Bar for allegedly defrauding death-row exonerees Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, and taking 1/3 of the compensation granted to the 2 men. Half-brothers McCollum and Brown were exonerated in 2014 after spending 30 years in prison, some on death row, for the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl. ➤ FIND related content here Both men are intellectually disabled, a factor that made them more vulnerable to wrongful conviction, and, the Bar complaint says, vulnerable to exploitation by Megaro. After McCollum and Brown were exonerated and formally pardoned by Governor Pat McCrory, they sought compensation from North Carolina for their wrongful convictions and incarceration. Megaro became McCollum's and Brown's lawyer in March 2015, after 2 women who claimed to be advocating on behalf of the brothers persuaded them to fire the lawyers who had been representing them in their comp...

One elderly woman sat with us in her living room, wearing a pink nightgown. "I should have followed my conscience," she said, her hands shaking. "I hope he can forgive me." It's unclear if she's seeking forgiveness from the innocent man she sent to death row, or God himself. She believed the Bible's instruction: "Thou shalt not kill." Yet, as a juror decades earlier, she voted for a death sentence for Henry McCollum, an intellectually disabled teenager who was accused of raping and murdering an 11-year-old girl in Robeson County. The juror put the trial out of her mind until, four years ago this week, McCollum was exonerated. New DNA testing proved another man guilty, and McCollum blameless. After 30 years on death row, McCollum was free. At the time, I was relatively new to my job at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, whose lawyers represented McCollum. His story showed me just how high the stakes are in this world. North ...

More than $1 million in compensation was supposed to help two brothers rebuild their lives. Instead, the money made them a target. FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — The state of North Carolina paid $750,000 to Henry McCollum in 2015 to compensate him for the 30 years that he, an innocent man, spent on death row. Seven months later, he was broke. Mr. McCollum, who is intellectually disabled, then began borrowing money at 38 percent interest. He kept his financial plight hidden from friends and supporters from his death row years. But last fall, he briefly and wearily opened up when he was handed documents showing he owed $130,000 on $65,000 in recent loans. “Sometimes I feel like I shouldn’t be out here,” he said. Mr. McCollum and his half brother, Leon Brown, who is also intellectually disabled, were demonized and convicted in one of the state’s most notorious rape and murder cases. Their decades in prison and their disabilities would have made for a difficult return to socie...

No new death sentences in 2017 DURHAM — North Carolina juries rejected the death penalty in 2017, refusing to impose death sentences at any of the four trials where prosecutors sought them and making this year the third since 2012 with no new death sentences. Juries in Wake, Granville and Guilford counties all chose life without parole instead of death this year. At a fourth capital trial in Robeson County, the jury said the defendant was guilty only of second-degree murder and he was sentenced to a term of years. Only a single person has been sent to N.C. death row in the past three and one-half years, and most of the state’s district attorneys are no longer seeking the death penalty. North Carolina has not executed an inmate since 2006 because of ongoing litigation over the state’s lethal injection procedures and racial bias in capital trials. “There are some elected officials in North Carolina who still like to talk about the death penalty for political purposes, ...