My client, Terry Ball, slipped away with barely a mention after living on N.C. death row for almost 25 years. I believe his life is worth remembering, and that his story, like all my clients’ stories, hold keys to understanding the origins of crime and our shared humanity with people labeled the worst of the worst.
Executing intellectually disabled inmates is unconstitutional, but N.C. tries anyway
Timothy Richardson is an adult who functions at the level of an 11 or 12 year old. Despite his clear intellectual disability, N.C. is still fighting for his execution.
The strongest punishment for the weakest among us
On trial for his life, Kenneth Neal was assigned a recently convicted child pornographer for a defense attorney. Just like the poor, intellectually disabled Brendan Dassey in Making A Murderer, Neal got stuck with a sub-par attorney who sabotaged his chance for a fair trial. The latest in NCCADP’s stories from death row.
Owning up to mistakes in death penalty cases
An Ashe County man was spared death last week after prosecutors acknowledged a serious mistake in his case. The deal was unusual, and commendable, in a system where prosecutors often try to hold onto death sentences no matter what.
Will Johnny Burr be executed for a crime that never occurred?
We like to think that a capital appeals process that lasts years weeds out all the wrongly-convicted inmates. Sadly, that’s just not true. No jury has ever heard the evidence that could prove Johnny Burr innocent.
Bad blood: False evidence and the death penalty
Prosecutors used evidence of “blood all over the room” to persuade a jury to sentence Patricia Jennings to death. What state experts didn’t tell the jury: Those “blood” spots had actually tested negative for the presence of blood.