POLI 203
Race, Innocence, and the End of the Death Penalty
Lectures: M, W, 1:25-2:15pm, Hamilton Hall (Pauli Murray Hall), 100
Note the evening speakers events, 5:30-7:00pm, as well, see below for dates

Spring 2022

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

Office hours: M 2:15-3:15 (in person), W 3:30-4:30 (zoom) and by appointment

Click here for information about the speakers series. (Poster version.) (Please note: attendance at the speakers series is mandatory for students enrolled in the class. It's open to others as well, so feel free to invite your friends.)

Click here for the syllabus. Click here to see a university-wide reminder of attendance and other policies that also governs our course together. This relates particularly to the pandemic but is not limited to that.

Click here for a template that you can use for your term paper. Feel free to download this template and just use it to write your paper. Click here for some guidelines about what we'll be looking for.

Zoom link for the main lectures: https://unc.zoom.us/j/98945429235 (requires a password available through Sakai)

Zoom link for evening speakers: https://unc.zoom.us/j/98439431543 (password: Innocent)

Zoom link for office hours: https://unc.zoom.us/my/frankbaumgartner

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.
2. Harris, Lynden, ed. 2021. Right Here, Right Now: Life Stories from America’s Death Row. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. (Note from ouir colleagues in Durham: Your students can receive a 30% discount off the list price of Duke University Press books if they order at dukeupress.edu and enter the coupon COURSE30 during checkout.)

Please refer to the syllabus for course policies, assignments, and so on. This page lists the weekly readings and will be continuously updated throughout the semester with announcements, links to resources, and other updates. Note that this website will be highly dynamic throughout the semester and will be the main place where I will add information about the course, as well as useful links.

Weekly schedule

Week 1: Jan 10, Introduction, and the 1972 Furman decision eliminating the old death penalty.

Monday: no readings. Slides. Playing Solitary
Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch1. Slides. Results from the first-day survey. (Ouch!)

Week 2: Jan 17, The 1976 Gregg decision and the modern death penalty system.

Monday:  MLK Day, no class

Wednesday:  Deadly Justice, ch 2. Slides

Week 3: Jan 24, Who commits homicide? Who is victimized? Who gets executed? For which crimes?

Monday:  Deadly Justice, ch 3. Slides

• BTW, I added some links to the speakers series website. Please read the one about Dontae Sharp and Ronnie Long; it covers a lot of interesting material about them and our class.
• Many of you had questions about peremptory challenges, and one of you sent me a link that could be useful: a podcast about it.
• See this interesting job posting at DPIC: a "data storyteller" - maybe you know someone with these qualifications; if so, please share.
• We're going to talk a little about the death penalty in Kansas. See these news stories about a decision from last week by the KS Supreme Court. Link here to Kansas v. Carr (2022); link here to the abortion related ruling, Hodes v. Schmidt (2019), and a state legislative analysis of that decision. Here is a link to the Kansas Constitution; see Section 1 of the Bill of Rights.

Evening speaker: Chris Turner
Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 4. Slides

Week 4: Jan 31, Is the death penalty reserved for the “worst of the worst”? Or for those who commit crimes in the wrong places?

Monday: Deadly Justice, ch 5. Slides (guest lecturer: Arvind Krishnamurthy)

• See this story about Charles Finch, who served 43 years for a crime he did not commit, received a pardon from the Governor only after his health declined precipitously, and then died last week. He was a client of the same Duke Innocence Project lawyers who will be in the speakers series later this semester.
• Those of you from Winston Salem may be interested in this new book about Darryl Hunt, who passed away recently, and about whom a journalist has now written a new book. Darryl was exonerated in 2003 for a crime that occurred in 1984. He was a very active speaker and advocate for justice throughout the state. There is also a film about Darryl.
  

Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 6. Slides

First essay due on Part I and II of Right Here, Right Now

Week 5: Feb 7, Is the death penalty reliable, or do sentences routinely get overturned? How long do individuals sit on death row before execution? Is that torture?

Monday: Deadly Justice, ch 7. Slides
Evening speaker: Jerome Morgan
Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 8. Slides

• Here are some interesting / troubling recent stories you might be interested. (BTW, that is professor-speak for *** read this or you'll flunk this class *** (just kidding). Still read them; they contain valuable insights.
• First, a story about Lee Malvo, the young man who participated in the Washington-area sniper attacks in 2002. He was sentenced to four life terms in Virginia followed by six more in Maryland. He's seeking to have the Maryland cases changed to life with parole in case he gets parole in Virginia. Interesting questions about how much punishment is enough for a child who participates in a terrible crime. Note also the terrible "perp-walk" photo the Washington Post chooses for this story.
• Second, a story about the psychology of stereotypes and a woman about to be executed in Texas where a significant amount of the evidence is that she did not behave "normally" after her child died. This story has similarities to the case of our speaker on March 7, Kristine Bunch. But this woman is about to be executed.
• Third, a recent story about the power of medical examiners (aka county coroners) who do autopsies and determine the cause of death. If they say a child died by accident, there is no crime. If they say they died from an injury, then there was a murder. Court proceedings therefore follow these decisions, which are made by a single person with little scrutiny. A good example of how life is more complicated than portrayed on TV crime shows, where no one ever makes a mistake.

Week 6: Feb 14, More on torture: sentencing innocent people to death, then reversing the sentence; the never-ending search for a humane method of execution.

Monday: Deadly Justice, ch 9 Slides

• A timely story in today's New York Times about a case at the US Supreme Court alleging that 25+ years in solitary confinement is cruel and unusual.

Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 10 Slides

• Link to a story about the exoneration of Vincent Simmons after 44 years at Angola prison in Louisiana
• Link to a story about another exoneree from Texas. The journlist, Shanel Menezes, is a graduate of this class.
• Link to the youtube video about the War of the Currents, 18 to 23 minutes into this hour-long special on Tesla.

Second essay due on Part III and IV of Right Here, Right Now

Week 7: Feb 21, Stays of execution, last minute delays, and mental health on death row.

Monday: Deadly Justice, ch 11 Slides.

• We will have a phone call from Scott Allen during Monday's class; see this link to learn more about his case. Scott will talk about the capital appeals process. Cliek here for an audio recording of Scott's phone call.
• See this recent article about a trial to start on Feb 28 in Oklahoma City concerning the constitutionality of Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol.
  

Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 12 Slides

• Listen to Shelf-life, a short audio story about the background of one death row inmate.
• We'll have a call from Lyle May. He'll talk about the psychological harm of living with a sentence of death, as he discusses in this recent blog post. Note, you'll be reading an article I wrote with Lyle May, several other students, and TA Alex Love during week 13; see below. You already know a little about Lyle, since he is the author of these stories in Right Here, Right Now: Badge of Honor * The Tar Pit * When We Were Young * Just Like a Frog * Sugar Rush. (Note: these audio recordings are in the voice of a professional actor, not Lyle's voice.) Here is the article Lyle mentioned in his phone call that he just published in a Catholic / Jesuit journal, America. Here is a link to the phone call recording.
• See this story about the death by natural causes of NC death row resident Carl Moseley, 56, who died of cancer while still striving to show his innocnece from a case dating back to 1991.

Week 8: Feb 28, Public opinion and cost

Monday: Deadly Justice, ch 13 Slides. Link to Gallup Poll data on the death penalty.

• We'll have a phone call from Eddie Taylor, who will discuss strategies to counter-act or deal with the psychological harm descrbed last week by Lyle May.
• Interesting story about a death row inmate sentenced in the 1950s who was released after a campaign about his innocence, but who went on to kill again. Title of the book: Scoundrel.
• Another one about police getting a false confession from a 15-year-old in exchange for a Big Mac and a promise to go home.
• Here's another about a wrongful incarceration - 13 days - and the trauma that created. What is that lawsuit going to be worth? Recall that the State of North Carolina awarded Ronnie Long $700,000 for 44 years.
• Story about Raymond Riles, who has been on death row in Texas for 45 years.
• Story about Rickey Ray Rector, executed in 1992 while Governor Bill Clinton campaigned for the presidency.

Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 14 Slides

• The music of Alim, who connected with UNC music professor Mark Katz, and who will be calling into class on March 2. https://soundcloud.com/rromealone
• See this video featuring his music and throughts, with the participation of Mark Katz. Click here for the audio recording of Alim's phone call to class.

Third essay due on Part V and VI of Right Here, Right Now

Week 9: Mar 7, Deterrence, and evolving standards / declining use.

Monday: Deadly Justice, ch 15 (No slides for today; we'll catch up on chapters 13 and 14 from last week first. BTW your quiz results continue to be excellent. Good job!)

• BTW, the US SC just reinstated the death penalty for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, whereas an appeals court had ruled the trial judge had made mistakes in not allowing evidence presented that the older brother, Tamerlan, had previously been involved in a triple murder. The Court reinstated the death sentence, ruling that the trial judge had not made important errors.

Evening speaker: Kristine Bunch

Wednesday: Deadly Justice, ch 16 Slides for ch 15 and 16

Spring Break: March 12 to 20, have fun, be safe

• Note this Right Here, Right Now event at the Carrboro Century Center on March 12, 2-5pm.
• Note that Lynden Harris, editor of Right Here, Right Now, is doing a zoom event at Duke Divinity School on March 18 at 12:30pm. You can watch and participate.
• (But have no fear, Lynden will be attending class wtih us on March 30.)

Week 10: Mar 21, Conclusions from this long review of so many issues: Does the death penalty meet the goals of Gregg, or fail the test of Furman?

Monday: Deadly Justice, ch 17 Slides

Evening speakers: Gary Griffin and Ken Rose

Wednesday: Review and catch-up, no readings. Come with your questions as well as your answers to this exercise. Please use this link to record your answers when you are ready. It should not take long. Slides

Fourth essay due on Part VII and VIII of Right Here, Right Now

Week 11: Mar 28 Current legal arguments

Monday: The Roper extension; argument: Should the age limit be 18 or 21 for the death penalty? Slides

• Jordan, Zoe. 2019. The Roper Extension: A California Perspective. Hastings Law Journal 71, 1: 197-228.
• Blume, John H., Hannah L. Freedman, Lindsey S. Vann and Amelia Courtney Hritz. 2020. Death by Numbers: Why Evolving Standards Compel Extending Roper's Categorical Ban Against Executing Juveniles from Eighteen to Twenty-One. Texas Law Review 98, 5: 921-951.
• Baumgartner report in the case of Randy Guzek v. State of Oregon.
• Special issue of the Journal of Pediatric Neuropsychology, vol 7, issues 1-2, June 2021, Law, Neuroscience, and Death as a Penalty for the Late Adolescent Class
  • Erin D. Bigler, Charting Brain Development in Graphs, Diagrams, and Figures from Childhood, Adolescence, to Early Adulthood: Neuroimaging Implications for Neuropsychology
  • Karen A. Steele, The Law, the Science, and the Logic of Ending the Teenage Death Penalty
  • Alex Meggitt, Trends in Laws Governing the Behavior of Late Adolescents up to Age 21 Since Roper
• This just came across my desk and may be of interest to you: It is a statement of policy by the current DA in LosAngeles County, CA, eliminating the death penalty from that office, the single most prolific office in the nation. This shows how easy it is, and the power of a local DA. Wow. Please read it; it's just 4 pages long.
• Looking for a gap-year job? Carolina Advising Corps is Hiring
• Mark Katz's Maymester class: Music and Incarceration in the United States, MUSC 286 section 1, MTWTHF: 01:15 PM-04:30 PM

Evening speakers: Dontae Sharpe, Ronnie Long, and attorneys Theresa Newman and Jamie Lau

• BTW, here is the order from the US 4th Circuit Court of Appeals regarding Ronnie Long. Thanks to Jamie Lau for sending.

Wednesday: Discussion of Right Here, Right Now with special guest, Lynden Harris, Executive Director of Hidden Voices. Slides

TA approval of your research paper topic due in section this week

Week 12: Apr 4, What if public support for the death penalty is partly connected to white racial hostility toward blacks? What are the legal ramifications of that?

Monday: David Boyce in the lecture rather than in the evening.

Wednesday: Focus on our guest speaker, Marc Bookman, and we'll cover some highlights from the readings on race listed beow. Slides

• Guest speaker, Marc Bookman, Executive Director of the Atlantic Center for Capital Representation in Philadelphia
  • Find out about Terry Williams case with these resources: An episode of "Death Row Stories" about the case from 2020, Predator or Prey? (This is Season 5, episode 3 of the series; you may need Amazon Prime or Apple TV to watch, or do it through the library.)
  • Please read this chapter about the Terry Williams case from Marc Bookman's book, A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays (New York, The New Press, 2021).
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.

Week 13: Apr 11, The death penalty normalizes extremely long prison punishments, such as “life without parole.” What should be the punishment for homicide?

Monday: How we got LWOP in the first place: Slides (Note, these slides are really about the readings for last week as well as the Racial Resentment article below)

• Baumgartner, Frank R., Tamira Daniely, Kalley Huang, Sydney Johnson, Alexander Love, Lyle May, Patrice McGloin, Allison Swagert, Niharika Vattikonda, and Kamryn Washington. 2021. Throwing Away the Key: The Unintended Consequences of Tough-on-Crime Laws. Perspectives on Politics 19, 4 (2021): 1233–1246.
• Baumgartner, Frank R, Christian Caron, and Scott Duxbury, Racial Resentment and the Death Penalty, manuscript under review, March 2022.
• We may also be catching up on the readings on race from last Wednesday's class.

Wednesday: Review of levels of homicide / manslaughter and relevant punishments, Slides (including about the Throwing away the Key article)

Links to the North Carolina criminal code and punishment grid below. Browse through the list of offenses and their corresponding offense levels, then look at the charts showing the penalties for those crimes. See what you think about the justice of that. Could you improve on it? Note in particular the differences between crimes that are successful and the "attempted" version of the same crime, such as the penalty for code 941, attempted second degree murder, and code 940, second degree murder. How about 945, solicitation to commit murder?

• Chart explaining mandatory penalties for Felonies; same chart for misdimeanors
• Spreadsheet listing all the laws you can break in NC, with their offense code and punishment class
• Here is a website associated with the trial in Kansas, including all the legal briefs and reports from the side opposing capital punishment.

Week 14: Apr 18, The Racial Justice Act and the future of the death penalty in North Carolina.

Monday: Background Slides

• 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.
• 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.

Evening speaker: Chris Ochoa

Chris mentioned his concern about the possible execution of Melissa Lucio; here is a link to a petition you can sign to build pressure to stop it.

Wednesday: Decisions and the current status of the NC death penalty Slides

• Racial Justice Act, 2009
• Reform of the Racial Justice Act, 2011
• Elimination of the Racial Justice Act, 2013
• Restoring Proper Justice Act, 2015
• State of North Carolina v. Marcus Reymond Robinson, Order Granting Motion for Appropriate Relief, 91 CRS 23143, 20 April 2012.
• State v. Robinson, (411A94-5), NC Supreme Court ruling vacating the 2012 State v. Robinson decision, 18 December 2015.

Six-page research paper due on Wed, 5pm.

Week 15: Apr 25, Conclusions, Discussions, and Review

Monday: Come with your questions and comments. Slides

Also, please consider writing a note to thank the university for the money to do our speakers series. Here is a template you can use. (Feel free to change the wordings.) Please print it out, sign it, and bring it to class either on the last day of class, or at the final exam. I'll collect them and give to the Powers That Be.

Evening speakers: Andrea Harrison and Katie Monroe
Wednesday: Last day of class, come with your questions about the final exam. Slides

Final exam: Monday May 2, 2022, 12:00 noon to 3:00 pm

Further resources, even after the course is over...

Many of you asked for additional books similar to Right Here, Right Now. Here are a few. The first one is actually written by many of the same individuals whose stories were compiled in Right Here, Right Now. Others were used in previous versions of this class and include a number of memoirs and stories about individual cases. There are many such books; this is just a sampling. Only the first book is creative writing by incarcerated individuals; others are memoirs or investigations of wrongful convictions.

• Castillo, Tessie, Michael J. Braxton, Lyle May, Terry Robinson, and George Wilkerson. 2020. Crimson Letters: Voices from Death Row. Castroville, TX: Black Rose Writing. 
• Rachlin, Benjamin. 2017. Ghost of the Innocent Man: A True Story of Trial and Redemption. New York: Little, Brown and Company. 
• Woodfox, Albert. 2019. Solitary. New York: Grove Press. 
• Marlowe, Jen, and Martine Davis-Correia, with Troy Davis. 2013. I Am Troy Davis. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books. 
• Temple, John. 2009. The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates. Jackson, MS: University of Mississippi Press. 
• Grisham, John. 2006. The Innocent Man. New York: Doubleday. 
• Liebman, James S., Shawn Crowley, Andrew Markquart, Lauren Rosenberg, Lauren White, Daniel Zharkovsky. 2014 The Wrong Carlos: Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution.  New York:  Columbia University Press. 
• Hinton, Anthony Ray, with Lara Love Hardin. 2018. The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row. New York: St. Martin’s. 
• Prejean, Sister Helen. 2005. The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions. New York: Random House. 
• Stevenson, Bryan A. 2014. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. New York: Spiegel and Grau. 
• Thompson-Cannino, Jennifer, Ronald Cotton, and Erin Torneo. 2009. Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption. New York: St. Martin’s. 
• Bookman, Marc. 2021. A Descending Spiral: Exposing the Death Penalty in 12 Essays. New York: The New Press.

If any of you are from Winston Salem, or even if not, you may be interested in this film: The Trials of Darryl Hunt. Darryl was a friend, and wonderful person; he previously spoke in this class. This documentary tells about his wrongful conviction for a brutal killing and the horrible racial dynamics surrounding the trial. He served almost 20 years in prison and when he returned to the community he was a leader for reform.

Compassion is a newletter / magazine published six times per year containing articles written by death-row prisoners across the country, and distributed for free to all death row inmates. The current editor is George Wilkerson, on North Carolina's death row.

An interesting NYT story from 1988 about what it's like to be a capital defender.

During his talk, Ken Rose talked about a film called "Fourteen Days in May" about one of his clients from Mississippi. Here is a youtube link to this film, which runs about 90 minutes. You can get a better copy by going through the UNC libraries.

Some of you may be interested in the torture element of prolonged solitary confinement. Here is a recent law review article on the topic.

A student in class is involved in this group, Free Minds Book Club, which zooms with formerly incarcerated individuals and encourages creative writing projects. Feel free to get involved.

Resources related to juvenile LWOP and related matters:

• A 10-minute video from the New York Times about the rise and fall of the "super-predator" idea.
• The amicus brief from 2012 referenced in that article to the US Supreme Court arguing that mandatory juvenile LWOP sentences are unconstitutional. (Note: your professor is one of the signatories of the brief, just fyi.)
• The US Supreme Court decision in Miller v. Alabama declaring this unconstitutional.
• Another amicus brief from Feburary 2016 regarding the constitutionality of the death penalty. The underlying case involves an inmate sentenced to death who was just over a number of thresholds: barely 18 years old, barely above 70 in IQ score, whose crime was death elligible only because of "multiple victims" included the unborn child of his pregnant girlfriend, and who came from Caddo Parish, LA (one of the most death-prone jurisdictions in America). These "knife-edge" characteristics of the case make it questionable whether the system really is reserved for the "worst of the worst." (Note: In this case, your professor is the leading signatory of the amicus brief. Some of the work you have seen in class is used in the brief.)

Lots of you want to know about internships. Here are a few ideas:

• First, find a public defenders office, either right here in Orange County, or elsewhere. They always need help! Some very large ones have very well organized internship programs, and my students have had amazing experiences at PD's offices in New Orleans, Baltimore, DC, Brooklyn, Philadelphia and elsewhere. Similarly, many District Attorneys offices provide similar opportunities, and an increasing number of these, in certain jurisdictions, have Conviction Integrity Units (sometimes called Conviction Review Units). Also look at the federal system, hwere there are federal defenders, including capital habeas units, working on capital appeals throughout the country. Any way to just get some experience with the criminal justice system I think is helpful, whether it's through a Sheriff's Office, a community organization working to oversee a police department, with a police department, or with a criminal defense lawyer, all those things can be helpful. Just being around this world is eye-opening, no matter what role you are playing.
• Center for Death Penalty Litigation. You know who that is. They are located in Durham.
• North Carolina Justice Center. They do a wide range of work relating to criminal justice and other issues.
• Forward Justice. They filed the suits concerning felon disenfranchisement and worked closely with Dantae Sharpe. They are in Durham as well.
• Emancipate NC. They work on structual racism issues; Raleigh.
• North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. This is also based in Durham and does advocacy and research.
• North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence. This is directed by Chris Mumma, and the group coordinates the work of various innocence projects in NC law schools; Durham.
• Duke Law Innocence Project. Despite the affliation (!), they do fantastic work. And yes, they are friendly with Carolina students!
• Duke Law Wilson Center for Science and Justice. Does lots of good work on various criminal justice issues in NC and nationwide.
• There are many many innocence projects throughout the country, too many to list here. The Big One is in New York, but there are smaller ones in many law schools around the country that need help as well.
• Legal Aid of North Carolina. Help to indigent defendants in a wide range of legal issues. Also in Durham.
• NC Prison Legal Services. Similar organizations are in every state. Reach out!
• SpiritHouse, an organization in Durham that provides a wide range of community-building activities and services.
• Healing Justice Project. Provides services to the many people affected by the aftermath of wrongful convictions, on both sides of the criminal justice divice (that is, crime survivors as well as those wrongfully convicted).
• Reach out to any organization that touches your soul!

BTW, if you want to write to any of the individuals who have called into our class, you can use this address. Note that the letter will be scanned, and they will get the scan, not the original, so don't include anything in the letter such as enclosures. Also make sure to use your full name in the return address. Put the name of the individual in the format listed below and then the address. Put a stamp on it and use the post office to mail it the old fashioned way!

Michael J Braxton - 0043529
Scott D Allen - 0005091
Eddie Larmar Taylor - 0762634
Lyle C. May - 0580028

Central Prison
PO Box 247
Phoenix, MD  21131  

page last updated April 27, 2022