POLI 203
Race, Innocence, and the End of the Death Penalty
Lectures: M, W, 11:15-12:05pm, Hamilton Hall (Pauli Murray Hall), 100
Mandatory evening lectures (see list below, and mark the dates!)

Spring 2025

Prof. Frank R. Baumgartner
313 Hamilton Hall, phone (919) 962-0414
Frankb@unc.edu
Web site: http://fbaum.unc.edu/

Office hours: Tu 2:30-3:30pm, We 12:05-1:25pm and by appointment

Books required for all students to purchase:

1. Baumgartner, Frank R., Marty Davidson, Kaneesha R. Johnson, Arvind Krishnamurthy, and Colin P. Wilson. 2018. Deadly Justice: A Statistical Portrait of the Death Penalty. New York: Oxford University Press. (Note: Royalties from the sale of this book go to the UNC Political Science Department and are used for student enrichment, including for the speakers series associated with this class.)
2. Harris, Lynden, ed. 2021. Right Here, Right Now: Life Stories from America's Death Row. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
3. (Additional readings, TBA.)

Note: The class requires attendance at 8 evening speakers events, on Mondays at 5:30 to 7:00pm. These are mandatory (but they are also the most interesting part of the class!). These are also open to the public, so you can invite your roomates parents, and friends. These are listed at the bottom of this page.

Week 1. Jan 8, Course Introduction
Wendesday: No readings (slides)

Week 2. Jan 13, 15. Furman (1972) and Gregg (1976): The End of the Old System, and the Creation of the “Modern” Death Penalty System.
Monday: Deadly Justice, ch 1 (slides) (results from first-day survey);
Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 2 (slides)

Week 3. Jan 20, 22. Understanding Homicide.
Monday: No class Jan 20, Happy MLK Day!
Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 3 (slides)

Week 4. Jan 27, 29. Which Homicides Lead to Death Sentences?

(Jan 27 Evening Speaker: Kristine Bunch)
Monday: Deadly Justice, ch 4 (slides)
Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 5 (slides)

Right Here, Right Now, Parts 1, 2 assignment due on Wednesday at 5pm.

Week 5. Feb 3, 5. Geography, Reversals.

(Feb 3 Evening Speaker: Chris Ochoa)
Monday: Deadly Justice, ch 6 (slides)
Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 7 (slides)

Week 6. Feb 10, 12. Is it Torture to Live on Death Row for 30 Years?
Monday: (No class on Feb 10, Happy “wellness day”)
Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 8 (slides)

Right Here, Right Now, Parts 3, 4 assignment due on Wednesday at 5pm.

Week 7. Feb 17, 19. Innocence; Methods of Execution

(Feb 17 Evening Speaker: Chris Turner)
Monday: Deadly Justice, ch 9 (slides)
Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 10 (slides)

Week 8. Feb 24, 26. The Work of an Innocence Project; Death Warrants and How Often they are Cancelled

(Feb 24 Evening Speaker: Ken Nixon)
Monday: Deadly Justice, Ch. 11 (slides)
Wednesday: Deadly Justice, Ch. 12 (slides)

Right Here, Right Now, Parts 5, 6 assignment due on Wednesday at 5pm.

Week 9. Mar 3, 5. Mental Health; Public Opinion

(Mar 3 Evening Speaker: Betty Anne Waters)
Monday: Special Guest: Chris Mumma, Director, Executive Director, NC Center on Actual Innocence. Readings: Please spend at least 30 minutes on the NC Center on Actual Innocence website. (slides)
Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 13 (slides) (Report on Brad Sigmon, FYI)
Note: we expect a call-in from Lyle May today, who will talk about torture. Extra reading if you are interested: Baumgartner, Frank R., Lyle C. May, Kaylee O’Brien, and Ava Yurko. 2025. The US Death Penalty as Torture. South Central Review, special issue on “Worlds in Crisis,” Forthcoming, Vol 42, No. 1-2. Also see Lyle's recent NYU Review of Law and Social Change article here.

(Spring Break, March 8-16)

Week 10. Mar 17, 19. Work of the Duke Innocence Clinic; Cost

(Mar 17 Evening Speaker: Leon Benson and Kolleen Bunch)
Monday: Special Guest, Jamie Lau, Supervising Attorney, Wrongful Convictions Clinic, Duke University Law School. Readings tba.
Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 14 (slides)

Right Here, Right Now, Parts 7, 8 assignment due on Wednesday at 5pm.

Week 11. Mar 24, 26. Deterrence, Declining Use

(Mar 24 Evening Speaker: Marvin Anderson)
Monday: Deadly Justice, ch 15 (slides)
Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 16 (slides)

Topic of your term paper assignment must be approved by recitation time this week.

Week 12. Mar 31, Apr 2., Summary and Conclusions; Music and Redemption

(Mar 31 Evening Speaker: Isaac Knapper and Amy Banks)
Monday: Deadly Justice, ch 17 (slides)
Wednesday: Guest lecture, Mark Katz with call-in from Alim Braxton. Readings tba.

Week 13. Apr 7, 9. Some Troubling Studies about Race and the Death Penalty.
Monday: (slides)

1. Rattan A, Levine CS, Dweck CS, Eberhardt JL. 2012. Race and the Fragility of the Legal Distinction between Juveniles and Adults. PLoS ONE 7, 5: e36680.
2. Eberhardt, Jennifer L., Paul G. Davies, Valerie J. Purdie-Vaughns, and Sheri Lynn Johnson. 2005/06. Looking Deathworthy: Perceived Stereotypicality of Black Defendants Predicts Capital-Sentencing Outcomes. Psychological Science 17, 5: 383-6.

1. Peffley, Mark, and Jon Hurwitz. 2007. Persuasion and Resistance: Race and the Death Penalty in America. American Journal of Political Science 51, 4: 996-1012.
2. Baumgartner, Frank R., Christian Caron, and Scott Duxbury. 2022. Racial Resentment and the Death Penalty. Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics 8, 1: 42–60.

Week 14. Apr 14, 16. The Racial Justice Act and the Future of the Death Penalty in North Carolina; Its Replication and Extension in California
Monday: Background (slides)

1. O’Brien, Barbara, and Catherine M. Grosso. 2011. Confronting Race: How a Confluence of Social Movements Convinced North Carolina to Go where the McCleskey Court Wouldn’t. Michigan State Law Review 2011: 463-504.
2. Kotch, Seth, and Robert P. Mosteller. 2010. The Racial Justice Act and the Long Struggle with Race and the Death Penalty in North Carolina. UNC Law Review 88: 2031-2132.

1. NC Racial Justice Act of 2009
2. CA Racial Justice Act of 2020

Mar 3, Betty Anne Waters. Kenneth Waters was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1980 and served 18 years of a life sentence before being released through the tireless efforts of his sister, Betty Anne. She knew her brother was innocent and put herself through community college, college, and law school in order to gain the skills she needed to set him free. The 2010 film Conviction describes their story.

Mar 17, Leon Benson and Kolleen Schoen Bunch. Kasey Schoen, 25, was killed in a 1998 murder in Indianapolis IN. Leon Benson, then 22, was later arrested and convicted for the crime, spending 24 years in Indiana prisons for a crime that was actually committed by a police informant named Joseph Webster. All this was known to police or prosecutors at the time. Kolleen Schoen Bunch is Kasey’s sister and has befriended Mr. Benson.

Mar 24, Marvin Anderson. Mr. Anderson, 18 at the time, was arrested and eventually sentenced to 210 years in Virginia’s prison system for a 1982 crime in which he was completely uninvolved. He served 20 years before being exonerated in 2002 when DNA evidence excluded him and pointed to someone many had suspected from the beginning, and who had confessed to the crime years before. After being released, Mr. Anderson followed his dream of being a firefighter and eventually rose to the rank of Fire Chief in Hanover, VA.

Mar 31 Isaac Knapper and Amy Banks. University of Maine history professor Ronald Banks was shot and killed during a robbery outside his convention hotel in downtown New Orleans in 1979. Isaac Knapper, 16, was arrested a week later and convicted of the crime, serving 12 years of a life sentence at notorious Angola prison before being exonerated when perjury, misconduct, and other flaws in the conviction were revealed. Amy Banks is the daughter of Professor Banks and was never notified that the case against her father’s killer had fallen apart. She has befriended Mr. Knapper.

Attendance slide for Waters.

 
Note: Parking available after 5pm in the Caldwell Hall Parking Lot adjacent to Hamilton Hall.

Resources that might be helpful or of interest, but are completely voluntary:

How to write to individuals on death row:

• First, look up their offender number (DOC #). No mail is delivered without one. You can find those numbers for individuals on death row at this link: https://www.dac.nc.gov/divisions-and-sections/institutions/death-penalty/death-row-roster
• Then address the letter as follows, exactly:
  
  Firstname MI Lastname DOC#
  Central Prison
  PO Box 247
  Phoenix MD 21131
  
  (Note it may take 2 weeks or more for the person to receive your letter. Also, they will receive a scan of it, not the physical letter itself.)


• For other states, see the Department of Corrections website for that state and search for how to write to a person in custody. There will be some similar process.

Many of you wanted to follow up on comments from Marcus Mitchell regarding access to educational programming in class on Feb 3. Several students put together this helpful set of information about where to write, and suggestions about what to say. (Thanks to Allison Agnoli for these notes.)

Ideas for places to volunteer or get involved:

• Your local Public Defender's office. There is one at every courthouse or county in NC.
• Your local District Attorney. Same idea.
• Local groups in Raleigh or Durham (but there are likely other simliar organizations in your home town if it is of a certain size)
  • Center for Death Penalty Litigation (Durham): Represents the bulk of individuals on NC Death Row, also individuals facing capital charges.
  • ACLU Capital Punishment Project: National group working throughout the country, based in Durham.
  • Innocence Projects: Consider these:
    • NC Center on Actual Innocence (Durham).
    • NC Innocence Inquiry Commission (Raleigh)
    • Duke Law School Innocence Clinic (Durham)
    • Wake Law School Innocence Clinic (Winston-Salem)
  • NC Indigent Defense Services: State-wide public defender's office, Raleigh.
  • Forward Justce: Civil Rights group in Durham.
  • Emancipate NC: Civil Rights group in Raleigh.
  • Southern Coalition for Social Justice: Civil Rights group in Durham.
  • Benevolence Farms: Re-entry facility operating a farm for women transitioninng from prison, in Orange County.
  • Healing Justice: Works with exonerees, victim families, survivors from wrongful conviction cases, Chapel Hill. (Transparency notice: My spouse Jennifer Thompson founded this organization and remains heavily involved in the work.)
  • Hidden Voices: Lynden Harris is the leader of this group, which uses art and performance to change minds. Orange County.
• Get involved in the foster care system. Protect children. Consider being a Guardian ad Litem, peole appointed by the court to advocate for the best interests of the child in a legal proceeding that affects them.
• Get involved in schools or programs for children facing difficulties.
• Help people in high school learn that they have college options and how to navigate the higher education system.
• Get involved in drug abuse counselling.
• Get involved in immigration rights.
• Get involved in anything that helps people facing marginalization.
• If you become a journalist, don't deal in stereotypes and tropes.
• Also note: You should not think of these things as just college internship ideas. As you volunteer or do an internship in one of these areas, find out what kind of education the managers and leaders of the organization have, those people whose work seems cool. interesting, and important. Ask them what is their educational background. Follow their footsteps. Why not devote your career to an area where you know you are helping?

page last updated March 6, 2025