NEWS

Panel talks Del. prisons, race, death penalty in Lewes

Phil Davis
pdavis3@dmg.gannett.com
From left: Pastor Paula Maiorano, Law clerk Jessica Mann and Lower Sussex County NAACP President Jane Hovington speak  at a forum on criminal justice and race in Lewes.

When Sherry Dorsey Walker, a Wilmington councilwoman, described her opposition to the death penalty inside a Lewes church, she spoke from personal experience.

In 1986, her cousin was killed in Newark by a group of white teenagers in what she called a racially motivated attack.

"Once he and the young men fought, it was really supposed to have been over," Walker said.

But after her cousin lost the fight and dropped to the pavement, the group got into a vehicle "and they drove over his face. And they put the car in reverse and drove back over his face."

Then, still in grade school, she believed the perpetrators needed to pay for their crime.

"For many, many years I was so angry," she continued. "I thought they deserved the death penalty for what they did to my cousin."

But as she grew, she said her view on the punishment "evolved spiritually and emotionally," and now she's one of the leaders of the Delaware Repeal Project, a movement to urge legislators to vote to remove the penalty from state law.

In a forum held inside the newly constructed Unitarian Universalists of Southern Delaware church in Lewes, a number of guest speakers focused on Delaware's criminal justice system.

In a state where blacks and minorities make up the majority of those incarcerated in its prisons, it was a frank talk about how the repeal movement reaches farther than only its primary focus.

Race and incarceration - 5:1 for blacks vs. whites

After Walker set the stage for the discussion, the Rev. Donald Morton, pastor of Perfected Life Church in New Castle, spoke to what he believes is a "normalization of social misery" in Delaware's urban areas.

"In urban spaces in particular, there's this sense that what's happening in urban spaces has been normalized," Morton said.

His point was urban communities, mainly those with large minority populations, have become numb to violence and poverty. Therefore, they fall into a cycle in which both they and the state's criminal justice system see them as a target.

He raised the fatal shooting of a wheelchair-bound black man in Wilmington to illustrate his point.

While police say the man, Jeremy "Bam" McDole, was armed and reaching for his gun when four police officers shot him on Sept. 23, the state's Department of Justice is now investigating after a video showing part of the incident was posted online. In the video, a man narrates the event while watching it unfold.

To Morton, it was the man's tone of voice that stood out.

"It wasn't as if (he) was excitable as it was something new," Morton said. "(He) lives in that every day. The man shot lives in that every day."

His argument was that if those in urban communities — which see larger minority populations than compared to whites nationwide — feel gun violence is a regular part of day-to-day life, it'll continually "normalize" that violence as a common response.

And because of the cultural roots African-Americans have with the urban community, it becomes what he called "our intoxication of thinking."

"We've actually made it illegal to be young, black and outside," Morton said. "So we're guilty of something. I don't know quite what that something is. But black folks are guilty of something."

"We're guilty of something based on the clothes that we wear. We're guilty of something based on the words we use," he continued.

Death penalty and race - 

At the beginning of a three-person panel, the discussion led with an examination on how the death penalty affects the disproportionate number of blacks and minorities in Delaware's prisons.

In 2012, a group of professors at Cornell University found that of 49 defendants sentenced to death since 1972, 53 percent were black while 39 percent were white. Comparatively, whites make up for 73 percent of the state's population.

In addition, that disparity has continued in recent years, with whites only accounting for 23 percent of those currently on death row, according to the study.

Paula Maiorano, a minister with Unitarian Universalists and an advocate against inequality, said the state's prison population is representative of a societal bias not represented by facts.

"White people actually do drugs more ... than African-American young people," Maiorano. "And yet, the concentration is particularly aimed at African-Americans. The stops are made. The arrests are made."

"So what we have is a targeted number of our citizens in our state who are arrested more frequently, go to trial more frequently, are convicted more frequently (and) are given longer sentences more frequently," she added.

Delaware Chief Justice: Delaware prisons have "shocking disparities" with racial makeup

It was a point touched upon by the Rev. Morton earlier when he said "well over 70 percent of those on death row are black and brown."

"There's still a prevailing thought that we're not supposed to be here," Morton said. "The way to deal with that is do we incarcerate (blacks and minorities) ... or do we determine to rehabilitate them?"

Jessica Mann, a law clerk with a Philadelphia-based law firm, argued the death penalty "doesn't serve any purpose of punishment because you're sending someone to death when there's 20 years of appeals."

"But when you add on the fact that African-Americans, Hispanics, Latinos are being incarcerated at a rate so much higher than other individuals, and they're more likely to receive the death penalty, it reflects negatively on our criminal justice system," Mann said. "Because it helps to bolster the fact that today, despite what we may want to think, we value white lives more than we value other life."

Poverty, race and criminal justice

Maiorano also pointed to how poverty plays a part in conviction rates.

"Because if you have a good lawyer, often you get a lighter sentence or no sentence at all versus if you do not have the money and you're represented by a public defender," Maiorano said.

She added that conviction rates rise for those who cannot pay bail and await trial in jail, which disproportionately affects the poor and, by extension, the black population.

Several members also focused on Sen. Bryan Townsend, D-11-Newark, who was at the forum.

"We've got to vote about it. Nobody ever gets a pass," Morton said. "It's time to evaluate what they are voting for."

He then pointed at Townsend, asking those who feel strongly about the movement to repeal the death penalty to "hold elected officials like Bryan Townsend accountable."

pdavis3@dmg.gannett.com

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@DT_PhilDavis