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Frontline Lawyers Tell of Trying Capital Crimes
by Paul Annas
Sean Devereaux, left, and Ron Moore, standing, with moderator Prof. Emeritus George Peery.
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Nearly 100 students came to Belk Auditorium on March 25 to hear Defense Lawyer Sean Devereaux and District Attorney for Buncombe County Ron Moore discuss the death penalty.
The discussion was moderated by retired Political Science Professor George Peery. The purpose of the panel was to open up a discussion that will continue with the appearance of Sister Helen Prejean at 7 p.m. April 3 in Moore Auditorium. Sister Helen is the author of Dead Man Walking and an ardent opponent of the death penalty.
Ron Moore has been the elected District Attorney in Buncombe County for 18 years. Devereaux is a long time Defense Attorney. According to Peery in his introduction, both of these men "have been intimately involved with the death penalty and how it works."
When students walked in, they were given a hand-out explaining in legal terms what must happen before someone is sentenced to death.
To be tried for the death penalty, a person must have been convicted of a capital felony -- a serious crime such as murder that can legally result in the death penalty.
Next there is a separate sentencing proceeding that determines whether the person will be sentenced to death or life imprisonment.
This proceeding is conducted by a trial judge before a trial jury. A judge gives instructions to a jury to "consider any aggravating circumstance or circumstances or mitigating circumstance or circumstances."
An aggravating factor makes a crime more serious and might cause the jury to consider a more severe sentence. For example, the crime was particularly "heinous, atrocious, or cruel," or the defendant has been convicted of a serious crime in the past.
A mitigating circumstance might cause the jury to consider a less severe sentence. For example, the defendant has" no significant history of prior criminal activity," or was "under the influence of mental or emotional disturbance."
During the trial "sufficient aggravating and mitigating circumstances are discussed," then the sentence recommendation must be agreed upon by a unanimous vote of the 12 jurors; if the jury cannot come to a unanimous decision within a set time, the judge shall impose a sentence of life imprisonment. The judge cannot sentence the defendant to death without consensus of all 12 jurors.
During the panel discussion, both Moore and Devereaux talked about what the law requires and how they deal with their clients. Towards the end of the discussion both talked about their most memorable cases.
Moore discussed a specific case of Randy Atkins. During the week of the blizzard in March 1993, he got a call from his assistant who deals with sexual assault, sexual abuse, and child abuse cases telling him that he needed to make a visit to the hospital. Upon arriving he found a 9-month old baby on life support with bruises, broken legs, and more importantly, a crushed skull. A second brain scan found that the baby was brain dead. "The nurses and doctors were torn up about that baby," said Moore. So was he. An autopsy was conducted, and he knew that it was a case that he wanted to try.
The gallery takes notes
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That Friday night he visited the funeral home. About 20 people were there. There were three sets of flowers, two given by Moore and his assistant. The mother and father could not come because they were both in jail. Moore helped carry the baby's coffin to the grave through two feet of snow.
At the trial, Atkins' excuse for his crime was his alter ego named Craig.
The mother decided to testify against her husband. She said she had seen Randy Atkins hit the child against their trailer. With a baby doll she showed the jury, audience and the judge what she had seen. Grabbing the baby doll by the ankles, she paused for nearly a minute. Then she raised the baby doll and slammed it against the confession booth. After the demonstration, everyone watching began to cry in horror, imagining what it must have been like to be there watching the baby die.
Atkins was found guilty of first degree murder and was sentenced to death. Moore said he still sometimes thinks about that baby. "That is a case that I can never get over."
But Devereaux said that even in the case of the most horrible act, legal decisions can't be based on emotion.
He gave a statistic during the end of the discussion. "Ninety-eight percent of the people on death row are poor and 60 percent are minorities." People who can afford good lawyers usually don't end up on death row, no matter how bad the crime, he said.
According to Deveraux, those who are less wealthy might receive help from the rural county lawyer who mainly deals with real estate. They don't have equal representation because they do not have a lawyer who has a specialty in the death penalty.
He gave another statistic: It costs up to $2.16 million more to prosecute the death penalty than to keep a person in prison for life. The money, he said, could be used to give tools to law enforcement to prevent crime.
He said his biggest problem is when "one of my clients is sent to death row." He feels that he "can't shake the case for a while," because he couldn't save somebody from inevitable death.
He is currently representing a man accused nine years ago of a child sex offense. "Three separate doctors, one at Duke, one at Chapel Hill, and a private practitioner in Raleigh" say not only that he did not do it -- nobody did it. "I'm convinced he's an innocent man."
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