The following comes from Amnesty International’s urgent action campaign. Marcus Robinson is about to be executed by the state of North Carolina for a crime that was committed shortly after he turned 18 years old. Doubt remains as to whether it was him or the other guy present who actually shot the victim, Erik Tornblom. The other defendant is currently serving life in prison with a chance for parole. Please read for more details regarding Robinson’s case and what you can do to help save his life.
Marcus Robinson, black, is scheduled to be executed in North Carolina on 26 January. He was sentenced to death in 1994 for a murder committed when he had just turned 18 years old.
A 17-year-old white youth, Erik Tornblom, was robbed and shot dead on 21 June 1991. Marcus Robinson and another African-American teenager, Roderick Williams (17), were arrested and charged with capital murder. It remains unclear who shot the victim. Marcus Robinson told police that it was Williams (who was later sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole). At Robinson’s trial, the prosecutor argued that Marcus Robinson had been the gunman.
In arguing for a death sentence before a jury made up of 11 whites and one non-white, the prosecutor pointed to statements attributed to Robinson before the murder that he was going to rob or kill a white person. His appeal lawyers have pointed to cases of white defendants who have been sentenced to prison terms in North Carolina for the racially motivated murder of black victims. They have raised the case of a 27-year-old white man who was convicted of the 1992 stabbing to death and castrating of a black man, whom he referred to as a ”nigger”. He received a life sentence. In another case, two white racists, aged 20 and 21, were sentenced in 1997 to life imprisonment for shooting two randomly chosen African-American victims.
The use of the death penalty in North Carolina, as in the USA as a whole, is marked by discrimination. In 2001, a
comprehensive study found that ”racial factors – specifically the race of the homicide victim – played areal, substantial, and statistically significant role in determining who received death sentences in North Carolina during the 1993-1997 period. The odds of receiving a death sentence rose by 3.5 times among those defendants (of whatever race) who murdered white persons.” Forty percent of murder victims in North Carolina are white, but 77 per cent of those executed since the state resumed judicial killing in 1984 have been of people convicted of killing whites. Research with capital jurors in the USA indicates that white jurors are more likely to vote for death than black jurors, and that majority white juries make a death sentence more likely. Research has also revealed a lower receptivity to mitigating evidence among white jurors when the defendant is black.At the time of the crime, Marcus Robinson was emerging from a childhood of severe abuse at the hands of his father. At the age of three and a half, for example, he was admitted to hospital, unconscious, having seizures and with blood streaming from his mouth and nose. An examination revealed burns, scratches, bruising and swelling. During his childhood, he also witnessed his mother being assaulted by his father. In the early 1990s, he was diagnosed with brain dysfunction, attributed to the abuse he had suffered, that impaired his ability to plan and control his impulses. Since then, medical science has established that, even without abuse, the adolescent brain is not fully developed at the age of 18 and continues its development into a person’s 20s. In 2005, when the US Supreme Court prohibited the execution of people who were under 18 at the time of the crime, it noted that ”as any parent knows and as the scientific and sociological studies… tend to confirm, a lack of maturity and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility are found in youth more often than in adults and are more understandable among the young. These qualities often result in impetuous and ill-considered actions and decisions.” Also unknown to the jury was the fact that, not long before the murder, Marcus Robinson had been prescribed Prozac after he reported mental and emotional problems. The side-effects of this drug can include mood changes, hyperactivity and aggressiveness.
The jury concluded that there were mitigating factors in Marcus Robinson’s case, including his youth, his background of childhood abuse, and behavioral or mental problems. However, they also found that the mitigating factors were not enough to outweigh the seriousness of the crime, and sentenced him to death.
Interviews with jurors after the trial revealed that during the sentencing deliberations, a juror had asked a court bailiff to bring in a Bible. Without either notifying or obtaining the approval of the judge, the bailiff did so. The juror then proceeded to read to other jurors a passage concerning the retributive notion of ”an eye for an eye” in an effort to persuade them to vote for a death sentence. The claim on appeal that this introduced an external influence jeopardizing the impartiality of the jury has been rejected and a hearing in federal court on the issue has been denied. In a 2-1 decision of the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in 2006, the dissenting judge protested that ”the majority ignores the fact that the Bible is an authoritative code of morality – and even law – to a sizable segment of our population.” He argued that it would be ”blinking (ignoring) reality not to recognize the profound influence that quotations from the Bible could carry in the jury room. Moreover, the specific passage read aloud… bears directly on the severity of punishment to be imposed for a criminal act and expressly requires the death penalty as a punishment for murder.”
Marcus Robinson’s mother has appealed for clemency. Nine months ago, her son Curtis was murdered. ”There are few words to describe the pain I feel from losing my son, Curtis, to murder,” she said recently. ”There are no words to describe the additional pain I will feel if my son, Marcus, is executed next week. I have been on both sides now. I felt the horror, the anger and the desire for vengeance after Curtis’s murder. But an eye for an eye would not bring back my beloved son.” She learned on 15 January that her third son, who is in the Navy, will be deployed to Iraq at the end of the month.
There have been 1,060 executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977, 43 of them in North Carolina. There are signs that the USA is slowly turning against capital punishment (see USA: The experiment that failed: A reflection on 30 years of judicial killing, 16 January 2007). There is strong public support for a moratorium on executions in North Carolina. Approximately 1,000 faith group congregations, businesses and community groups have passed resolutions calling for a moratorium, including almost 40 local governments in the state. In addition, more than 40,000 people in North Carolina have signed the moratorium petition.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:
– expressing sympathy for the family and friends of Erik Tornblom, and explaining that you are not seeking to excuse the manner of his death or to downplay the suffering caused;
– opposing the execution of Marcus Robinson, noting that doubts persist as to whether he was the person who actually shot Erik Tornblom;
– noting that while the prosecutor’s arguments for a death sentence in front of an almost all-white jury included evidence that Robinson had acted with racist motivation,research indicates that North Carolina’s capital justice system is itself tainted by racial discrimination;
– noting that Marcus Robinson’s involvement in this crime came when he had just turned 18 years old and when he was emerging from a childhood of severe abuse, abuse which led to severe injuries and brain damage that impaired his planning ability and impulse control;
– noting that the death penalty extends the suffering of the murder victim’s family to that of the condemned inmate, and expressing sympathy for Marcus Robinson’s mother, who has lost one son to murder and is facing the prospect of losing another to execution, as well as facing another son being deployed to Iraq;
– calling on the governor to grant clemency to Marcus Robinson in the name of compassion and justice;
– calling on the governor to support a moratorium on executions in North Carolina, noting the large public support for such a measure based on concerns about the reliability and fairness of the capital justice system.APPEALS TO:
Governor Michael F. Easley,
Governor’s Office, 20301 Mail Services Center,
Raleigh, NC 27699-0301
Email: governor.office@ncmail.net
(via website) http://www.governor.state.nc.us/email.asp?to=1.
Fax: 011 1 919 733-2120 / 011 1 919 715-3175
Salutation: Dear GovernorPLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY. Check with the Urgent
Action Office if sending appeals after 26 January 2007.
If Mr. Robinson’s brain is damaged to the point that he cannot restrain himself from killing people, then why should prison guards and fellow inmates be exposed to the clear and immediate danger that such a person poses?
Because a just society doesn’t execute people for being damaged?
Capital punishment is wrong on so many levels that it would be impossible to address in a comment. short version:
The legal system is not omniscient
There is no sorry we screwed up
The responsibility for the slaughter of a helpless human is spread across and entire State’s population
Any argument about bias in its application assumes its legitimacy
So bringing in a religious document to jury deliberations is okay as long as it’s the Bible? Jurors are not supposed to adhere to the laws of the Bible, but the laws of the state.
Killing a Black person especially if you’re White isn’t going to get you a death system. Capital Punishment was set up to punish the killing of White people especially by people of color. For example, the vast majority of American Indians are on death row, not for killing people of their own race but of killing Whites.
I think it’s only Asian-Americans who are more likely to be on death row for killing members of their own race, rather than White but their numbers are fairly small. Interesting considering that for each race, intramurder is much more common than killing someone outside of your race.
Killing a Black person especially if you’re White isn’t going to get you a death system.
This doesn’t appear to be true. There are certainly racial disparities in death penalty sentencings, but this seems to show that about 7% of interracial DP cases are whites executed for killing blacks. (Assuming that the number of interracial murders are proportional to the population, that should be more like 13%.) There’s a legitimate question about how much racial discrimination is in play, but nobody has a get-off-death-row-free card due to skin color.
Argh. Hopefully someone can come along and close that tag. My bad.
Site: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=5&did=184
Ya know…if it was my child that had been killed, I cant say that I’d respond well to total strangers trying to assure me there arent trying to downplay the seriousness or suffering caused. It would send me into a state of pissed off that would not bode well for the one on death row for it.
That being said, Im pro death penalty in cases where there is no doubt. This obviously does not meet that and needs to seriously be revised.
Mike Easley is a former state prosecutor and is highly unlikely to commute anyone’s sentence. Early in his first term it came up that he had a conflict of interest in issuing pardons, since he had sent up many of the death row inmates himself. IMHO, he should recuse himself and let someone else review these cases.
Actually, to see a disparity in DP sentencing in White –> Black vs. Black –> White, I’d want to see the percentages of guilty verdicts as well, and I’d want any differences in mandatory sentencing taken into account. If the guilty verdicts are disproportionate to population, then it would make sense that the DP sentencing would be as well.
I don’t support the DP, though. I don’t believe in the legal system’s infallibility enough to justify giving it such a power. It’s the ultimate expression of State power over individual rights. In this day and age, the penal system can incarcerate someone securely enough to prevent them from killing anyone ever again.
RonF,
It’s been a while since I was in law school, helping out some professors and discussiong the Innocence Project etc etc. So i’m sorry, i can’t recall any particulars, and am acting only on memory.
that said, i am almost certain that there have been fairly good studies showing a discrepancy between black>white and black>black murders wrt the death penalty. I tend to trust my memory on this one for some reason. Perhaps someone else can confirm.
As a close and personal friend of Erik, I followed the case and my opinion is this: Marcus Robinson showed no mercy to Erik’s pleas for life, why should anyone show mercy to him? Erik’s mother died earlier this month waiting for justice for her son. Marcus Robinson had played a game of basketball with Erik not too long before he decided to rob and murder him. They went to school together – how do you murder someone you’ve known most of your life in cold blood for a poc car and some change in his wallet? If Marcus Robinson can’t control himself because of a so called “mental condition” then I see no better place for him than death row – let God decide is he is to be forgiven.
No mother should have to live through the pain of having a closed casket funeral for her 17 year-old son because someone shot him point-blank in the face after he left work. Marcus Robinson knew good and well the laws of our society, and that murder is punishable by death – let him pay the consequences he deserves!
hi was a friend of the man marcus murdered. the person who wrote about racial issues, well marcus chose Erik because he was a whitey, yes he was abused, but he was able to live a normal life up until this point, thats bs if he was so messed up why didnt his mother get him help. and cruel and inhumane my ass was Eriks execution style murder not cruel and inhumane, i also agree that the other man involved shouldnt get life in prison they should both fry. lethal injection is to good. when they chose to kill someone they chose to die.
I personally believe that according to God’s law we do not have the right to pass judgment such as this one; deciding who lives & who dies should be a decision left strictly up to him, no matter how cruel & harsh the crime was that that person committed. This is a problem with todays society we spend too much time trying to decide what’s best for one circumstance or another, why do you think there is so much turmoil in the world today? Today’s society has gotten farther & farther away from listening to the father. Lord forbid, even if I’d lost a son to murder, I’d still be against the death penalty, because the same way you judge one the father will judge you 10 fold. To those who have lost a loved one to murder I’d like to apologize & send my deepest sympathies & say may God be with you & heal you in time, God bless!
Before people make comments about Marcus Robinson I really wish they would have their facts straight. Where is the evidence that Mr. Robinson murdered anyone? Was any blood or gun powder found on Mr. Robinson or was it found on Roderick Williams which is serving a life sentence with possible parole? I followed the case from day one and trust me ALL evidence was found on Roderick but because someone had to be punished and Marcus was of age he got the death penalty. Is this case being treated fairly? If Mr. Williams was the trigger man but did not receive the death penalty because being months shy of 18 is that fair to Marcus Robinson?
God does not like it when we hope for someones excecution. The bible says that ,”whatever a man soweth so shall he reap”, “vengence is mine saith the Lord”, “fret not thyself because of evil doers neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity for they soon shall be cut off as the green grass”. I am totally against the death penalty and I pray for Mr. Robinson and all death row inmates. I have recently lost a family member to a senseless murder but asking a judge to sentence them to death is something I could never do. In most cases the victims family decides whether they want the accuser sentenced to life or go after the death penalty and we chose life. Why, because God only deserves the right to take life point blank, period. I would rather someone spend the rest of their life re-living the event over and over, I feel that’s justice enough.
In response to JenB ‘s comments written,Jan.25th@5:03 PM
Let’s set the record straight,okay.Marcus did not attend school,
nor did he know Erick Tornblom.Rodrick Williams is the person whom
you have reference to. According to court records,Rodrick knew the victum and attended school with him.It’s apparent you are talking hearsay and not facts.
Along with your incorrect statement,are we to suppose you to be a Psychiatrist or palm reader that you can see so much.If you were at the trial through it’s short duration,you’d see there was no evidence proving Marcus the murderer of Erick.
When there is no proof of who pulled the trigger,how is it that one get death and one get life with parole?What is wrong with this painting?But let me see,I know you will say if you had your way they both would be on death row.Now how did i see that!
Being a personal and close friend of Marcus,I sat in court with him daily and in my
listing and viewing Marcus was not proven guilty of murder.Since i know Marcus,i
can tell you he never went to the same school or did he know the victim as said.In my opinion,no Mother should have to bury or see her child wronghfully convicted for something he did not do.According to the bible,we kill people with out mouth daily,what sentence do we derserve?
Hi, i am in reference to lisa from February 1st I would like to clear up a misunderstanding. How do you really know Marcus said he was going to off a whitey? If someone told you they were going to off a “whitey”, and it happened wouldn’t you remember them saying that? Well again I was one who was in court from day one and the so called witnesses could not remember Marcus saying that. Now the interesting part, after not remembering they got to read their statements from 1991 and said o that’s what he said! To me that sounds fishy as fishy can get. The witnesses were in trouble themselves and was offered a deal to say Marcus was going to off a “whitey” to shorten their time in jail. Please if you were not in court to see with your eyes and hear with your ears, do not operate off of hear say because we all know everything we hear is not the gospel. Has everything someone said about you been the truth or have a lie every been told on you?
A comment was made about Marcus Robinsons demeanor on channel 5 news from a juror name “Marium”. She said voting for the death penalty was easy for her because she was a former Douglas Byrd classmate of Eriks and Marcus showed no emotion during the trial. Did she ever think that maybe he was on medication that kept him from reacting to anything? Is this how all jurors think and vote. I thought a juror is suppose to weigh all evidence presented. Roderick Williams had blood on him saying he locked himself out of his mothers house and got cut, but come to find out that was a lie. All gun powder was found on Roderick and none was found on Marcus. If you shoot someone point blank range with a sawed-off shot gun the blood blow back would be on the shooter right? Blood was on Rodericks body, clothes, in the soles of his shoes and gun powder on his hand. With what I just told you, why is Marcus on death row and Roderick serving life with parole? Why was the blood not sent off that was found on Roderick? Erik stopped that night because he knew and trusted one person and that was Roderick. Yes, Marcus could have robbed him and left him alive because only a description could be given of him to police BUT Erik knew and could identify Roderick Williams which I again remind you is serving life with possible parole. Are you sure you want to condemn the wrong man and let the guilty continue living? That’s what “Marium” should have been asking herself not who’s crying and who’s not showing emotions. People often say, “it’s not strangers that harm us, it’s the people we know and trust”. Roderick silenced Erik for life, yet he is gonna live his out thanks to the juror name “Marium”.
I was friends with Erik and was actually in 1st period Gym with both Erik and Roderick. Why Roderick and Marcus (whom I did not know) would do such a senseless, heinous crime, I’ll never understand. Erik was a kind, easy going guy- he deserves justice. As far as I’m concerned, Roderick shoud be sitting on death row right next to Marcus.
thank you for those who express their condolence and outrage. For thelovechild – who are you? I was there for every day of the trial too. Would you like to discuss it?
This is for Eriks sister. I am so sorry for your loss. I loved Erik more than anyone will ever know. I personally feel that they both should be on death row. I feel they are both just as guilty as the other. I will be in court Sept 6th for the racial biased case just to support Erik. I would love to meet you if talk to you. I spoke with your dad a few years ago. I hope he is doing well. Your mom used to be so good to me. I am sorry you lost her but atleast we know she is holding Erik in her arms. Please stay strong.
and I’m editing to remove the email address, hopefully you got it in the notification. If not, post here and I’ll send it again. I”m also on facebook if you want to look for me.
I do look me up it Lisa pait skinner on Facebook.
As a close friend of Erik’s family, I have seen how this process has effected Erik’s mother (God rest her soul), father and sisters. The latest RJA appeal is yet another victimization of his family, and only serves to drag them through the pain of his loss all over again.
The only “racial justice” in this specific case would be to fulfill Robinson’s sentence–he committed a premeditated racially-motivated hate crime, and should pay the price for his actions. Folks want to talk about “racial justice” but they forget that the REASON Robinson killed Erik was BECAUSE Erik was a “white boy.” The fact that the good taxpaying citizens of NC are footing the bill for BOTH sides of this appeal just adds insult to injury.
If these anti-death-penalty people were REALLY so concerned with “racial justice,” they would instead spend this money on the raising up the minority communities–schools, after-school programs, childcare–to PREVENT future Marcus Robinsons from being created in the first place, rather than throwing it away trying to prevent the rightful execution of a confessed racially-motivated sociopathic murderer. We should be focusing or time, money, and efforts on the “new seeds” while they can still be saved, not the spoiled fruit that have already fallen from the tree…
Perhaps there ARE cases in NC where the RJA applies in a meaningful manner–but Marcus Robinson is not one of them, and allowing his appeal is a tremendous waste of resources, time, and taxpayers money that would be better spent on other, more community-positive activities. The only thing this particular case will really accomplish is make some lawyers richer, and give a few academic researchers material for the next peer-reviewed paper they will try to get published…