deathwatch's blog

It has been an exceptional year for life in North Carolina. No one was executed, and only one new person was added to death row (the lowest number since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1977). This year, as many capital defendants were acquitted as were sentenced to death. More death row inmates were exonerated than executed. North Carolina should be proud.

John Conaway was convicted and sentenced to death by a jury that included a close family member of one of his co-defendants. And it took the courts 16 years to say that might be a problem.

Attorneys for five death row inmates appeared in a Wake County courtroom yesterday as part of an ongoing lawsuit over North Carolina's lethal injection protocol.

Howdy, BlueNC. DW is again asking for your help in expanding a recent blog post. DW is looking for information about where the major party candidates for president and vice president stand on capital punishment. What we have so far is below.

DW appreciates all links, videos, blogs, leads, ideas, and irate ramblings.

North Carolina death row exoneree Glen Edward Chapman is profiled in this month's Details magazine. The article is amazing; I have nothing to add, I just wanted everyone at BlueNC to have the chance to read it. Also, there are stunning photographs which do not appear in the online version of the article, so I encourage people to pick up a print copy at their local newsstand.

From the North Carolina Coalition for a Moratorium:

Partners,

We are in a final push to have a vote on the NC Racial Justice Act in the North Carolina Senate. Here's how you can help:

1. Follow the link to write a personal email to each Democratic Senator in the legislature. Tell them the people of North Carolina deserve a vote on this critical legislation. Click here.
2. Forward this email to all your friends.

**YOU MUST ACT NOW AS THE LEGISLATIVE SESSION WILL END ON THURSDAY.**

North Carolina death row inmate Guy Tobias LeGrande has been found incompetent to be executed under both state law and the 8th Amendment of the United States Constitution.

After the jump, read a May 2007 post from my blog with more about Mr. LeGrande's mental state.

In a rare move, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals (which handles cases from North and South Carolina, as well as Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia) granted relief to death row inmate Dr. William Gray[FN] earlier this week. The Court said that Gray, who was sentenced to die for the 1992 murder of his wife in Lenoir County, should receive a new sentencing hearing because his lawyers failed to investigate and present considerable evidence that Gray was severely mentally ill.

Dr. Gray had been exhibiting bizarre behavior for months before he shot his wife. After he was arrested, he was kept in the state mental hospital for five weeks. Once Dr. Gray returned to the jail, he had to be kept in the juvenile cell block for his own safety. Everyone around him in the months before and after the murder noticed that Gray had made a precipitous decline into mental illness, but his attorneys – neither of whom had tried a capital case before - presented no such evidence to the jury. Now William Gray has a second chance.

Levon "Bo" Jones, recently released after serving over a decade for a murder he did not commit, held a press conference yesterday in Raleigh. Jones' attorneys spoke first. Ernest "Buddy" Conner told those gathered how the police failed to dust for fingerprints at the scene and eventually lost what little physical evidence they gathered. He also spoke of the State's star witness, Lovely Lorden, who unbeknownst to Jones' trial attorneys was a paid, professional snitch who changed her story several times before trial. Conner noted that this injustice could have been corrected years earlier had North Carolina state courts bothered to consider Jones' appeals.

For the second time in two months, an innocent man is being released from North Carolina's death row. Levon "Bo" Jones spent 13 years on death row after being convicted of the 1987 murder of Leamon Grady. Federal judge Terrence Boyle vacated Jones' conviction and death sentence in 2006 after finding that Jones' trial attorneys "utterly failed" to investigate the crime. (Read the Order here.) Duplin County District Attorney Dewey Hudson, who tried Jones in 1993, vowed to retry the case. This week Hudson was forced to admit that he has no evidence against Jones, and is expected to ask the court to release Jones today.