The first clip is about three minutes in length:
Rev. Barber pointed out that many whites as well as blacks saw the injustice in the case, and any racial divisions in the Wilson community were caused by the prejudicial presumptions of the prosecutorial system. This clip is about 53 seconds in length.
The text of Rev. Barber's statement follows:
One hundred years ago, the NAACP started with blacks and whites forming an organization. In addition, one part of its major mission was to stop the lynching of black men and to challenge a system that often overcharged, over-prosecuted and over-incarcerated black men. One hundred years later, we are still fighting these battles. The final rendering of the court’s in the James Johnson case on Monday is a tragic triumph, a bitter-sweet portion of victory on behalf of a young man that should have never been made to endure over five years of mistreatment by the judicial system all because of what we still believe was prosecutorial misconduct.The Johnson case was never about the Willises versus the Johnsons. This family, James himself, and all of their supporters including the NAACP have always prayed for the loss of life of Brittany Willis. Many of us have children. Many of us have known loss. Neither this family nor not one of the supporters has said one bitter thing towards the Willis Family. The James Johnson case is about James versus an arrogant system of injustice that was bent on blaming a young man for a death he had nothing to do with and prosecuting him for the same. District attorneys and investigators are supposed to be ministers of justice who like the rest of us assume innocence until proven guilty. In this case, they became ministers of injustice and assumed guilt before innocence. Even the court said on Monday, this young man was overcharged from the beginning and when the system knew it, it refused to correct itself and in addition, I would add fell further into the chasm of injustice.
Let us look at the issues for a minute:
* If James and his father had not gone to the authorities, and told what they knew, the crime itself may not have ever been solved.
* If the legal system had protected James’ identity, then the culprit may have never lied on James.
* If the system had looked at the evidence, which in no way linked James to the murder, he would have not been incarcerated.
* If James had not had the strength of character, the strength of family and the strength of faith to maintain his innocence, the system would have beat them him into submission. Remember the system charged him with Capitol Murder without bail but then reduced it to Life with a Million Dollar bond and tried to get him to plead guilty. Even after the system knew they had no case, Johnson was offered plea deals after pleas deals, trying to get him to plead and cover up the system’s mistakes. He was offered a plea to serve a lesser amount of years. He was offered to plead guilty to a Boxcar Felony of Accessory after the fact. He was offered a plea for Accessory. The weekend before the special prosecutor was to take over; he was offered a plea that would have left him in jail for years. Even on the morning when the special prosecutor took over the case, he was offered pleas that included jail time for a something that he did not do. During the month that the special prosecutor was investigating the case, he was offered pleas. One of them being he would serve as many 18 years. Even the original accessory charge was offered as a plea, which could have possibly carried additional jail time over what he had already wrongfully served.
* So if James had not had the strength to maintain his innocence, if white and black lawyers had not come to his aid to help create a justice team because he did not have a million dollars for a dream team, if the NAACP along with thousands of out partners had not used our collective strength and if everyday people willing to give a dollar here or five dollars there for the accumulative for a very modest defense fund, then we very well could have been looking at a young man going to prison for the rest of his natural life or worse gotten the death penalty for something he did not do.
The court was right on Monday to describe this finality as a “scarlet letter.” Remember in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, the letter is more of an indictment on a system of injustice than it is on the person who wears it. When we see James Johnson, we see a broken system that will take 1/5 of a young boy’s life away from him that will break the upward trajectory of a life that will wrongly incarcerate and prosecute when it is bent on proving the system is right rather than confessing the system is wrong and has failed. We must stop this in North Carolina. Have you noticed that even now, in all of the cases that we know about recently, only the court in Wilson offered an apology? From the Governor to the AG all the way down, no one has said we are sorry on behalf of the state. We must change this course.
This year the Legislature will consider the Racial Justice Act, which passed the House in 2007. It would allow a defendant to raise the issue of race discrimination in the criminal justice procedure to a special reviewing commission. This issue is one many defense lawyers, prosecutors, and judges never mention on the record.
Within the next month, NAACP leaders are taking a delegation to Washington to meet with the new Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department and the FBI, to discuss a number of things including federal intervention.
We are sending a letter to Gov. Perdue, Atty. General Cooper, and leaders of the legislature asking for them to convene a Joint Commission to examine why it always seems that when prosecutorial mistakes are made, Black people and other people of color are usually the victims of these mistakes? Are we just unlucky? I don’t think so.
Al McSurely, chair of the NC NAACP's Legal Redress Committee, offered a litany of similar cases of prosecutorial misconduct that prove the Johnson case is part of a destructive pattern. The text of his statement follows
Just look at what we have seen in a few cases in North Carolina in just a few years.
On Monday, February 16th, 2009, by the grace of God, by the hard work of his lawyers, by the strength of his family, and by the NC NAACP shining the bright light of truth on the gross mistakes in the back rooms of the Wilson County Courthouse, another Black man was set free after a four and a half year nightmare. That makes at least eight North Carolina Black men in the past three years, who we know about, who were victims of prosecutorial misconduct, most of whom could have been wrongly executed in our name.
How long will we let these injustices, done in the name of The People of North Carolina, continue? When will we say Enough? Are the few investigative journalists we have left, the few lawyers willing to challenge their peers, the small non-profit legal firms who carry the banner of justice for those on death row, and our overworked volunteers in the NAACP---must we carry the burden of exposing prosecutorial misconduct in the 100 courthouses in our big state? When will our government, the people we elect and pay our tax money to, when will they get together and say: Enough? Let us review seven cases of prosecutorial misconduct we have looked at recently:
1. Darryl Hunt: There was much anger on the part of some powerful white people because a young white female was sexually assaulted and killed by a black man in Winston-Salem. Vengeance was in their hearts. Darryl Hunt was not an early suspect. He became a suspect by chance. The police ignored clear evidence of Hunt’s innocence. Once they focused on Hunt, they sought to build their case, not investigate for the truth. The police relied on testimony from eyewitnesses who came forward only after Hunt’s name and picture were splashed all over the media. There was not a shred of physical evidence tying the Darryl to the murder. The appellate system failed. Newspaper reporters did their own investigations, and, after 20 years of a nightmare, the “System” found Darryl Hunt innocent. But we did not fix the system.
2. Terrence Garner: The real culprit told the police Terrence was not involved. The police and prosecutor were not interested. The culprit’s lawyer confirmed his client admitted he was lying in the initial accusation. The appellate system failed. Only an investigation by a television reporter aroused enough national pressure to free this young Black man. But we did not fix the system.
3. Floyd Lee Brown: Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson granted a Writ of Habeas Corpus in October 2007, after Mr. Brown’s attorney and our Anson County Branch brought to the Court’s attention that Mr. Brown had been held in the Dix Hospital for 14 years (costing the state over $2.3 million) because of the prosecutor’s negligence.
4. Guy Le Grande: This mentally ill Black man wore a superman suit when he represented himself at his death penalty trial. The all-white jury took less than an hour to sentence him to death in Stanly County in 1996. The Judge, the D. A., the D.A’s assistants, and almost all of the spectators were white. The victim of the murder, and her husband, who had planned the murder and who admitted he had paid Mr. Le Grande to murder his wife, were all white. On appeal, Mr. Le Grande was not permitted to raise the fact that the D.A. in that case had a record of removing qualified Black people from the juries in his capital cases. . In 2007, with the NAACP’s help, Le Grande’s court appointed lawyers were able to persuade the Stanley Superior Court that their had been a miscarriage of justice in that case, but the underlying racism and prosecutorial misconduct has yet to be addressed.
Since the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty nationally, there have been 130 human beings found to be not guilty on the eves of their executions in their respective States. In the past 16 months, #126, #128, and #129 on the Death Penalty Information Center’s List of 130 innocent people who spent more than a decade on death row before being set free, were all Black Men from North Carolina.
5. (#126 on the List) Jonathon Hoffman: The State of North Carolina, acting in our name, convicted Mr. Hoffman in 1995. After 12 years on death row, the State dismissed all charges against Mr. Hoffman on Dec. 11, 2007.
6. ( #128) Glen Edward Chapman: The State of North Carolina, acting in our name, convicted Mr. Chapman in 1994. After 14 years on death row, the State dismissed all charges against Mr.Chapman on April 2, 2008.
7. (#129) Levon "Bo" Jones: The State of North Carolina, acting in our name, convicted Mr. Jones in 1993. After 15 years on death row, the State dismissed all charges against Mr. Jones on May 2, 2008.
There are two criminal justice systems in the United States. One for the rich. One for the poor. The one for the poor has a sub-system, particularly in the South, for the Black man because many voters, who elect District Attorneys and sit on juries, still believe Black lives are not worth as much as white lives. If a Black man is accused of killing a White person, the prosecutor uses the death penalty and the prospect of white people drawn from the voting lists, as bargaining chips. The Black defendant and his lawyers know his chances are slimmer before such a jury, with several of its members taught since childhood to be afraid of him.
For 100 years the NAACP has exposed the stark racism in many prosecutions and sentencing of Black men. For three years, our NC NAACP, in concert with 90 progressive partners cross the state, representing over a million voters, have asked the Legislature on Jones Street, some hard questions about racism in the Criminal Justice System:
1.Why does North Carolina, at the beginning of 2008, have 173 people on death row, and 105 were people of color—over 61%?
2. Did you know that Race is a matter of life and death in the criminal justice system?
3. Did you know a defendant's odds of receiving a death sentence are 4.4 times higher if the victim is white than if the victim is African-American?
4. Did you know that 37 people on NC’s death row were represented at trial by lawyers who would not meet today’s minimum standards of qualification?
5. Did you know only one of the State’s 39 D.A.’s are Black?
6. Did you know that by the time Black men reach the age of 35, about 6 out of 10 of those who had not graduated from high school had spent time in prison?
7. Did you know Judges are now forced to give fixed prison terms to “habitual” offenders and that 74% of those convicted as habitual felons are African-American?
8. Did you know in the past 15 years the state’s prison population has grown from about 21,000 to about 34,000, a 62% increase compared to a 21% increase in N.C.’s total population growth?
9.Did you know about half of the prison inmates are non-violent criminals?
10.Did you know that the rates of drug-use among blacks and whites are similar, but almost 70% of N.C.’s drug-crime prisoners last year were Black, compared to the 18% who were white?
11. Did you know that 70% of inmates entering N.C. prisons did not graduate from high school and 40% are functionally illiterate?
12. Did you know that for some young people, the prison system represents the State’s second chance to meet its constitutional duty to provide adequate and effective education for all its citizens?
For three years our HK on J Coalition has made six demands to start fixing the system, including:
Abolish the death penalty.
Abolish the disproportionate mandatory sentencing of minorities and open up our judicial system to scrutiny and overhaul which will protect the rights of all.
Fund Alternative Sentencing programs, drug courts, mental health courts, drug rehabilitation programs and other alternatives to incarceration.
Place a moratorium on prison construction and instead fully fund public education, alternative sentencing programs, and literacy programs that will decrease recidivism.
Require the Department of Corrections work with the Department of Public Instruction to insure that all able inmates learn to read and write on computers while in prison within two years.
Require all non-violent and able inmates be immediately placed in full-time education/job training programs.
This year the Legislature will consider the Racial Justice Act, which passed the House in 2007. It would allow a defendant to raise the issue of race discrimination in the criminal justice procedure to a special reviewing commission. This issue is one many defense lawyers, prosecutors, and judges never mention on the record.
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