Russell William Tucker was a Black man on trial for murder in North Carolina in 1996.
He was accused of killing Maurice Travone Williams, 23, a Kmart security guard shot to death on his first day of work two years before.
The evidence against Tucker was substantial, but two Winston-Salem prosecutors didn’t depend on that alone to win a conviction, Tucker’s lawyers say. Instead, they skirted the law to make sure an all-white jury sat in judgment of him.
Prosecutors used a “cheat sheet” from a seminar dubbed Top Gun Il that taught prosecutors across the state how to get around a U.S. Supreme Court ruling forbidding the rejection of jurors based on race, Tucker’s argument to the state Supreme Court states.
“Prosecutors were encouraged to paint Black jurors as exhibiting ‘resistance to authority,’ an ‘air of defiance,’ ‘lack of eye contact,’ and ‘anti-prosecution tendencies,” Tucker’s filing states about the Top Gun II training held by the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys.
The result, Tucker’s attorneys argue, is Tucker was convicted and sentenced to death by an all white jury.
On Wednesday, about 27 years after his conviction, his attorneys asked the North Carolina Supreme Court to order a new trial.
More than one man’s fate at stake
Civil rights advocates say the Supreme Court has an opportunity with Tucker’s case to correct one injustice, and to also clarify what claims it will accept as evidence that prosecutors unfairly excluded jurors because they are Black.
“The exclusion of Black people from juries is a long-standing problem in North Carolina stretching back to the days of Jim Crow,” said Gretchen M. Engel, executive director of The Center for Death Penalty Litigation, in a statement. “But rarely is the evidence so clear as in Mr. Tucker’s case.”
About half of the 137 people on death row in this state were convicted with juries that were all white or had one person of color, according to the center, which is representing Tucker.
North Carolina courts are behind other neighboring states in terms of enforcing a 1996 U.S. Supreme Court decision that prevents prosecutors from excluding jurors on the basis of race, Ian Mance, an attorney for civil rights organization Emancipate NC, wrote in a Campbell Law Review article.
Until last year, no North Carolina convictions had been overturned in response to the decision. The situation allowed prosecutors to strike prospective Black and Hispanic jurors with impunity, according to center.
Can justices consider juror discrimination?
However, before the Supreme Court can consider whether prosecutors excluded jurors based on their race, they must decide whether they can even consider Tucker’s arguments about jury selection for his trial.
A Superior Court judge previously denied Tucker’s motion to have his conviction vacated, saying he couldn’t consider the jury selection argument because no new evidence has been presented.
It was the appeal of that judge’s decision that led to the case being heard before the Supreme Court Wednesday.
Senior Deputy Attorney General Danielle Elder also contends the cheat sheet isn’t new evidence. Tucker should have raised the concern, which was brought up at the trial, sooner in his many previous appeals and motions to have his convictions vacated, she argued.
Tucker’s attorneys contend they didn’t discover the cheat sheet until 2015 after it was provided as evidence in another Forsyth County case. But Elder contends it was provided to Tucker’s defense team much sooner.
The Superior Court judge also rejected a Michigan State University study as new evidence. It showed that one of the prosecutors in Tucker’s trial struck 62% of Black jurors and only 20% of white people in four of his cases.
There were legitimate reasons for at least three Black jurors to be dismissed, Elder contends in court documents.
Prosecutors didn’t seat two Black men on the jury who said they were reluctant to impose the death penalty, Elder contends. A third Black juror, who fell asleep during jury selection, said her shift work made it hard to stay awake during the trial.
Tucker’s attorneys argued that white jurors who had similar concerns were allowed on the jury.
The 1994 killing happened after Tucker had stolen clothes and pulled out a gun when Williams and others who initially tried to stop him from leaving the Kmart. Tucker fired at Williams and others as they ran away. Tucker later opened fire on a police car, injuring two others.
This story was originally published February 09, 2023 8:00 AM.
