CHAPEL HILL, N.C. -- When death row inmate Harvey Green faces execution on Friday (Sept. 24), Dan Pollitt will be in the same place, doing the same thing he's done during numerous other N.C. executions - standing outside the prison, calling for a moratorium on the death penalty.
But before the execution takes place, Pollitt, an emeritus law professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and associates will call attention to the issues through a new book they're distributing to state legislators, educators and ministers.
"Unjust in the Much: The Death Penalty in North Carolina" (1999, Chestnut Tree Press) includes the edited transcript of an April 1998 symposium, organized by Pollitt and Geoffrey Mock, co-chairs of North Carolinians Against the Death Penalty, and funded by the Paul Green Foundation and the N.C. Academy of Trial Lawyers.
Published through private donations from state legal organizations and individuals, the book was edited by Pollitt, Kenan professor of constitutional law at UNC-CH for 37 years before retiring in 1992, and Calvin Kytle, author, retired journalist and civil rights activist now living in Chapel Hill.
The impetus for the book was additional support for the American Bar Association's resolution for a moratorium on the death penalty. The resolution outlined four major concerns:
- Inadequacy of court-provided counsel for indigents accused of murder (Gross examples include a court-appointed attorney who "slept off a drunk" during his client's murder trial.);
- National statistics show blacks are inevitably given the death penalty for killing whites, while white-on-white, white-on-black and black-on-black murders rarely receive the death penalty (Harvey Green, a black who was convicted of killing two whites in the same year that Pitt county reported 11 homicides - including three in which whites killed blacks, was the only defendant whose execution was sought.);
- Inadequate protection for the mentally incompetent and juveniles; and
- Changes in the appellate review process. (The right to appeal to federal courts on habeas corpus after state appeals have been exhausted has been done away with.)
Unfortunately, Pollitt says, nothing came of the ABA resolution, and these problems still exist. "But we're not giving up - our purpose is to get a moratorium. We want to make this information available to the public and in readable form. Our goal is to get the 3,500 copies of the book into the hands of legislators, newspaper reporters and editors, local church-goers and high school teachers and students."
The book includes the content of panel discussions on the demographics of death row, mentally retarded and juvenile delinquents and race and class and an address on what the Constitution says about the death penalty - discussions that featured such luminaries as North Carolina Central University Chancellor Julius Chambers and the Honorable James Exum Jr., former chief justice of the N.C. Supreme Court.
Pollitt says one of his favorite comments during the daylong event came from Marshall Dyan of the N.C. Academy of Trial Lawyers. Dyan pointed out that it's usually "outsiders" of some sort who get the death penalty. "The people of this state, the people of this country, simply don't have the stomach for applying the death penalty in a way that's across the board and fair," Dyan contended. "They only want to impose the death penalty on those people 'who are not like us, who are something other than us.' But the bottom line is: there aren't any such people; there aren't any people who are other than us. They're all human."
Besides the symposium transcript, "Unjust in the Much" also includes a section called, "Why I'm Against the Death Penalty. Those whose opinions are featured include U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, former Democratic Senate candidate Harvey Gantt, author Lee Smith, attorney Wade Smith and UNC-CH professor Chuck Stone.
Kytle and Pollitt also intended the book as a resource, so they provided a glossary of principal death penalty cases and Supreme Court decisions discussed in the book.
Pollitt's opposition to the death penalty dates back many years ago when he represented two death row clients. They "set the pattern of neglect and child abuse and low IQ and alcohol abuse that we always see in these inmates," he says. He won those cases during a time "when courts were more receptive to constitutional arguments on behalf of these people," he adds.
Pollitt, who for years spent his summers practicing in one of Washington, D.C.'s best-known civil rights law firms, says he has seen support for the death penalty come and go. He recalls, for example, a case in which he and others tried to get a 16-year-old black woman from Rocky Mount released from death row about 25 years ago. "I remember that I gave a talk and then-Gov. Scott and attorney general Bobby Morgan and also the lieutenant governor were there with us and signed a statement against the death penalty," he says.
In 1972, the Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty, only to restore it in 1976 if the states would pass legislation with safeguards in it. "The question was whether North Carolina should pass it - I believe it passed by one vote," Pollitt said. "At that time, most people were against the death penalty. Now, most are for it. It ebbs and flows. And it'll change again."
For a copy of "Unjust in the Much," contact Geoff Mock, 1008 Lamond Ave., Durham, N.C., 27701, or geoff@dukenews.duke.edu .
Note: Pollitt can be reached at (919) 962-4127 (W) or 942-5521 (H). Contact: David Williamson, 962-8596 or Dennis Baker, 962-0352.