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In 2008, LDF’s Criminal Justice Project successfully removed two African-American men and one Latino man from death row. In doing so, LDF exposed the discriminatory and corrosive effects of capital punishment in the United States. LDF clients Raymond Whitney, Herbert Williams, and Mariano Rosales each spent decades awaiting execution for capital convictions that were fundamentally flawed due to serious constitutional violations. It was only after years of legal advocacy by LDF and its cooperating attorneys that justice was finally achieved for these three men.
These cases paint a disturbing picture of capital punishment in America.
Although, in 1976, the United States Supreme Court declared that modern death penalty laws provide adequate protection against arbitrary and unreliable sentencing, the facts surrounding the administration of the death penalty in general, and these three cases in particular, reveal that the administration of capital punishment remains fundamentally flawed. African Americans are significantly overrepresented on death row, comprising more than 40% of the condemned while only 12% of the national population. Eighty percent of all executions since 1976 have been for murders involving white victims despite the fact that half of all murder victims are African American. And at least one in five executed African Americans was convicted by all-white juries.
The capital convictions overturned by LDF in 2008 also demonstrate how persistent, deep-seeded discrimination continue to taint our system.
Mariano Rosales’ Harris County (Houston) Texas capital murder conviction and death sentence were found to be unconstitutionally obtained after LDF revealed that Mr. Rosales’ trial prosecutors discriminated against African-American and Latino prospective jurors. In throwing out this conviction and death sentence, the federal court relied upon a documented history of intentional exclusion of potential jurors of color by Harris County prosecutors, Mr. Rosales’ trial prosecutors’ pattern of disproportionately excluding minority jurors, one trial prosecutor’s tracking of the race of minority prospective jurors, and one trial prosecutor’s open admission to having reservations about seating minority jurors in a case involving a minority defendant. While the errors in Mr. Rosales’ case were ultimately caught and corrected, his case is merely the tip of the iceberg, as many other death row prisoners have been convicted by juries that were selected through the same discriminatory methods.
Herbert Williams was unconstitutionally sentenced to death by a jury that never heard critically relevant mitigating evidence about his childhood. By failing to properly investigate, develop, and present all the available evidence of Mr. Williams’ life history, his trial lawyer was constitutionally ineffective. LDF’s investigation of Mr. Williams’ background revealed that contrary to the incomplete picture presented to the jury by trial counsel, Mr. Williams was beaten with belts and electrical cords, and deprived of adequate food, clothing, basic hygiene and medical needs. This evidence should have been presented to the jury that decided whether Mr. Williams should be sentenced to life imprisonment or the death penalty. When LDF presented a full portrait of Mr. Williams’ childhood to the federal courts, they found a reasonable probability that the new details of his abuse would have made a difference between a life and death sentence, and that Mr. Williams was denied his Sixth Amendment right to the effective assistance of counsel.
Raymond Whitney was convicted of murder and sentenced to death by a Philadelphia, Pennsylvania jury. Mr. Whitney was resentenced to life without possibility of parole after LDF established that he is mentally retarded and has been so impaired throughout his life. LDF proved that Mr. Whitney’s death sentence was unconstitutional based on Atkins v. Virginia, a case in which the Supreme Court declared that the execution of anyone with mental retardation is “cruel and unusual punishment.” In proving Mr. Whitney’s diagnosis, LDF presented the court with evidence of Mr. Whitney’s IQ scores, the testimony of an expert psychologist, and the testimony of Mr. Whitney’s friends and family members. Together, this evidence proved that Mr. Whitney had suffered with mental retardation throughout his life.
Injustices such as excluding minority jurors from a trial or failing to investigate and present critical life history evidence are intolerable in any context, but they are unconscionable in death penalty cases. Until the criminal justice system is reformed so that it provides equal justice for all defendants, LDF remains committed to the continual struggle to protect the rights of people of color on death row.