Justice Bernette Johnson is poised to become the first black chief justice of the Louisiana Supreme Court, now that her colleagues have rejected a racially charged challenge to her seniority.

Johnson, who was appointed to the court as part of a settlement over civil rights violations under the Voting Rights Act, has been serving on the court longer than any other judge, and was prepared under the state’s seniority system to take on the court’s top spot when Chief Justice Catherine Kimball retired. Even today, Johnson is the only black Supreme Court justice in a state in which nearly one third of residents are black. As part of the 1994 settlement, an eighth seat was initially added to the court, but because the state Constitution capped the number of justices at seven, Johnson was appointed to the appellate court, though she served as a member of the high court for her entire tenure.

When Kimball announced she would retire, some of Johnson’s colleagues alleged that because Johnson was first appointed as a judge on the state’s appellate court and was only later elected directly to the Supreme Court, her first years serving on the court did not count towards her seniority. Johnson sued in federal court, seeking enforcement of the initial consent decree. District Judge Susie Morgan sided with Johnson, finding that the consent judgment calls for her six years serving the court as an eighth member “to be credited to her for all purposes under Louisiana law.”

Gov. Bobby Jindal appealed the ruling to the federal appeals court. But while that appeal was pending, Chief Justice Kimball asked her state Supreme Court colleagues not involved in the dispute to issue their own decision. In an opinion released Tuesday, the justices sided with Johnson, holding that “Justice Johnson is presently most senior for purposes of succeeding to the office of chief justice.” The decision appears to have rendered the appeal moot, but remarkably, even with the federal trial court and the majority of the state Supreme Court justices siding definitively with Johnson, the state’s lawyers have apparently asked for more time to consider how to proceed, according to Reuters. Hopefully, this is just procedural caution, and not an even bolder manifestation of hostility toward racial justice.

Terrance Williams

As the date approaches for the scheduled execution of Terrance “Terry” Williams, who was sentenced to death in Pennsylvania for killing two men that he says sexually abused him, the state’s Board of Pardons voted unanimously today to “hold the case under advisement” in light of new evidence. The board had initially voted to deny clemency for Williams. It was expected that the board would make a final decision today, and the board did not indicate whether it would indeed hold a new vote before Williams’ Oct. 3 execution date.

Reacting to the New York Police Department’s aggressive stop-and-frisk tactics, the Bronx district attorney’s office has halted all prosecutions of people at public housing projects for trespassing, unless and until they can conduct an interview with the arresting officer. This is the “first known instance in which a district attorney has questioned any segment of arrests resulting from stop-and-frisk tactics,” according to the New York Times.

The NYPD’s stop-and-frisk tactics came under fire after news emerged that police stops in New York City increased by more than half a million between 2003 and 2011, and that New York officers conducted more stops of young black men in 2011 than there are young black men in the city. A significant proportion of NYPD stops, 10 to 15 percent, occur at public housing facilities, where police can arrest someone who they believe does not live at the housing project and is not a guest.

After receiving numerous complaints from defense attorneys about trespass arrests, Jeanette Rucker of the Bronx DA’s office conducted an investigation that yielded disturbing results. The New York Times explains:

[S]he found that “in many (but not all) of the cases the defendants arrested were either legitimate tenants or invited guests,” she wrote.

In some cases, Ms. Rucker claimed, the police arrested people even when there was persuasive evidence that they were not trespassing, citing “several instances where defendants who were guests, had the person whom they were visiting verify this fact to the arresting officer, yet the defendant was arrested anyway.” In those cases, the deposition from the arresting officer “indicated the defendant did not know the name of any tenant or the apartment number.”

From 2009 to 2011, the police arrested more than 16,000 people on trespass charges in public housing, according to a report filed as part of the federal litigation over the arrests.

According to another account by counsel for Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, some officers were under the mistaken impression that they “were entitled to stop and question anyone inside” public housing.

The findings led the DA’s office to require in-person interviews with arresting officers before prosecuting people for trespass in public housing. But as the Legal Aid Society in New York’s chief lawyer Steven Banks says, this is exactly the type of thing prosecutors should be doing anyway to verify the legal support for these arrests.

Over the last few months, the number of stops has dropped a dramatic 34 percent, following public outcry, new NYPD policies and three court rulings that question NYPD tactics. But that has not changed the impression that the stops are deeply discriminatory. A poll out earlier this week found that 64 percent of New Yorkers, and 80 percent of African Americans, think the police favor whites. The poll also found that a majority of New Yorkers think stop-and-frisk has led to the harassment of innocent people.

When police investigated the death of Brian Epp, they determined that John McNeil was merely acting in self-defense when he shot Epp for allegedly loitering on his property, threatening him and his 19-year-old son with a knife. They didn’t charge him with any crime. But 274 days later, McNeil was prosecuted and sentenced to life in prison, theGrio explains:

The case relates to events on December 6, 2005, when McNeil received a distress call from his teenage son that a man was lurking around in their backyard.

“John called 911 and told the police he was on his way home,” said his wife, who is living with advanced stage cancer. According to testimony, the man, Brian Epp, a hired contractor with whom McNeil had past disagreements, had already pulled out a knife on McNeil’s 19-year-old son.

When McNeil returned home, Epp, who is white, refused to leave, despite being asked several times. McNeil and eye-witnesses testified that he fired a warning shot but when Epp charged towards him with his hand in his pocket he shot out in self-defense.

Witnesses corroborated this account, as well as McNeil’s fear of Epps. A couple who had also hired Epps testified at trial that they carried a gun around him because of his threatening behavior. Nevertheless, McNeil, a black property owner who has now been in jail for almost six years for the death of a white trespasser, lost his appeal before the Supreme Court in 2008.

McNeil’s case is, in many respects, the mirror image of the infamous shooting of Trayvon Martin earlier this year. In Florida, a “Stand Your Ground” law that often enables shooters to literally get away with murder initially protected George Zimmerman from prosecution, although he has since been charged with second-degree murder, and Zimmerman could still escape justice because of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. McNeil, on the other hand, has now lost six years of his life in spite of what appears to be a much clearer case of self-defense under Georgia’s “Castle Doctrine,” a more limited law that permits the use of deadly force to defend one’s own property.

Civil rights groups are now calling for McNeil’s immediate release, pointing to the Trayvon Martin case to show that laws intended to apply equally to all races discriminate against African Americans whether they are the alleged perpetrator or the victim.

“We are victims at both ends of the gun,” said Marcus Coleman, who leads the Atlanta chapter of the National Action Network.

The mayor of McNeil’s hometown, Wilson, N.C., has also joined in calling for McNeil’s release. In a letter to Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, he said, “I have read the entire trial transcript and I believe it’s clear that John only acted to protect his family.”

In the Georgia Supreme Court’s opinion, the one dissenting justice, Chief Justice Leah Ward Sears, wrote unequivocally that McNeil should have been protected by Georgia’s “Castle doctrine,” writing: “the evidence was overwhelming in showing that a reasonable person in McNeil’s shoes would have believed that he was subject to an imminent physical attack by an aggressor possessing a knife and that it was necessary to use deadly force to protect himself from serious bodily injury or a forcible felony.”

McNeil, who had no other criminal history, has a second appeal pending. If he loses that, he will have to file a clemency request with the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles.

“The John McNeil case is unique in the Southern and American criminal justice system,” said Rev. William Barber, president of the North Carolina NAACP, in an interview with theGrio. “You just can’t find a case where a black man on his property shoots a white armed aggressor and the black man is defended by two senior white detectives, white eyewitnesses, a black female Chief Justice of the state Supreme Court, all who challenge the conclusion of and prosecution by a white DA.”

The Pennsylvania Board of Pardons denied clemency today to the Pennsylvania inmate who faces execution Oct. 3 for killing two men that he alleges sexually abused him.

Three out of the five board members voted to spare Terrance “Terry” Williams from a sentence of death, but a unanimous vote was required. Reports the Philadelphia Inquirer:

With Williams’ state and federal appeals exhausted all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the 46-year-old former Germantown High School quarterback’s last hope of escaping becoming the first person executed in Pennsylvania in 13 years lies in a hearing Thursday before Philadelphia Common Pleas M. Teresa Sarmina.

The court agreed to hear testimony from two witnesses whom Williams’ lawyers argue covered up evidence of Williams’ sexual abuse.

The clemency petition filed on behalf of Williams was supported by 22 former prosecutors and judges, 34 law professors, 40 mental health professionals and more than 36 religious leaders, and urged the board to spare from execution a man with an extensive childhood history of abuse that was never revealed to the jury. Even the widow of one of the victims submitted a letter asking that his life be spared. It was accompanied by a letter from 26 child advocates and sexual abuse experts, which stated: “The evidence of abuse in this case is clear. There can be no doubt that Terry was repeatedly and violently abused and exploited as a child and teenager by manipulative older men. Terry’s acts of violence have, alas, an explanation of the worst sort: enveloped by anger and self-hatred, Terry lashed out and killed two of the men who sexually abused him and caused him so much pain.”

The clemency petition explained:

At the time of the killing, Terry was only three and a half months past his eighteenth birthday, the minimum age for the imposition of the death penalty. On that tragic day, Terry and another 18-year-old, Marc Draper, beat Mr. Norwood to death in a cemetery in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia.

At trial, the jury was informed that Terry had prior convictions for a 1982 armed robbery and the 1984 killing of Herbert Hamilton, which Terry committed at ages 16 and 17, respectively. The jury never learned, however, that both Herbert Hamilton and Amos Norwood had sexually abused Terry, or that both killings directly related to Terry’s history of sexual abuse by these and older males, which began when Terry was only six years old. In fact, jurors heard very little about Terry’s childhood, which was marked not only by over a decade of sexual abuse, but by years of physical and emotional abuse, neglect and abandonment by those who were supposed to love and care for him. The unrelenting abuse and neglect made Terry an easy target for sexual predators. […]

Five of the jurors from Terry’s capital trial agree that Terry’s life should be spared. In recent sworn statements, they have explained that if they had known the truth about Terry’s childhood, the fact that he was exploited and sexually assaulted by the men he killed, as well as the fact that a life sentence meant life without parole, they never would have sentenced Terry to death.

A Pennsylvania inmate on death row was sexually abused by the men he was convicted of murdering, according to a clemency petition filed yesterday.

The petition, supported by 22 former prosecutors and judges, 34 law professors, 40 mental health professionals and more than 36 religious leaders, makes an impassioned case for sparing from execution a man with an extensive childhood history of abuse that was never revealed to the jury:

Pennsylvania is preparing to execute Terrance “Terry” Williams for the 1986 capital murder of Amos Norwood. At the time of the killing, Terry was only three and a half months past his eighteenth birthday, the minimum age for the imposition of the death penalty. On that tragic day, Terry and another 18-year-old, Marc Draper, beat Mr. Norwood to death in a cemetery in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia.

At trial, the jury was informed that Terry had prior convictions for a 1982 armed robbery and the 1984 killing of Herbert Hamilton, which Terry committed at ages 16 and 17, respectively. The jury never learned, however, that both Herbert Hamilton and Amos Norwood had sexually abused Terry, or that both killings directly related to Terry’s history of sexual abuse by these and older males, which began when Terry was only six years old. In fact, jurors heard very little about Terry’s childhood, which was marked not only by over a decade of sexual abuse, but by years of physical and emotional abuse, neglect and abandonment by those who were supposed to love and care for him. The unrelenting abuse and neglect made Terry an easy target for sexual predators. […]

Five of the jurors from Terry’s capital trial agree that Terry’s life should be spared. In recent sworn statements, they have explained that if they had known the truth about Terry’s childhood, the fact that he was exploited and sexually assaulted by the men he killed, as well as the fact that a life sentence meant life without parole, they never would have sentenced Terry to death.

The allegations of abuse were strongly supported by a letter from 26 child advocates and sexual abuse experts, which stated: “The evidence of abuse in this case is clear.” Even Mr. Norwood’s widow submitted a letter asking that his life be spared.

If the execution takes place, it would be the first in 13 years, and only the fourth since Pennsylvania reenacted the death penalty in 1978.

For Williams to be granted clemency, the petition must be reviewed by the Board of Pardons, which must unanimously recommend that Gov. Tom Corbett grant clemency, though the recommendation is not binding on the governor.

The board has scheduled a public hearing on the petition for Sept. 17, and Change.org is circulating a petition.

A federal district judge rejected this weekend a racially charged challenge to a Louisiana Supreme Court justice’s seniority that has threatened Justice Bernette Johnson’s path to becoming the court’s first black chief justice.

Johnson, who was appointed to the court as part of a settlement over civil rights violations under the Voting Rights Act, has been serving on the court longer than any other judge, and was prepared under the state’s seniority system to take on the court’s top spot when Chief Justice Catherine Kimball retires. An eighth seat was initially added to the court to address racial disparities. Even today, Johnson is the only black Supreme Court justice in a state in which nearly one third of residents are black. But because the state Constitution capped the number of justices at seven, Johnson was appointed to the appellate court, though she served as a member of the high court for her entire tenure.

When Kimball announced she would retire, some of Johnson’s colleagues alleged that because Johnson was initially appointed as a judge on the state’s appellate court and was only later elected directly to the Supreme Court, her first years serving on the court did not count towards her seniority. But Johnson sued in federal court, seeking enforcement of the initial consent decree. District Judge Susie Morgan sided with Johnson, finding that the consent judgment calls for her six years serving the court as an eighth member “to be credited to her for all purposes under Louisiana law.” Morgan also rejected arguments that the federal court did not have jurisdiction over the issue.

The ruling is subject to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, should Johnson’s fellow justices choose to escalate their efforts to disqualify Justice Johnson from her court’s center chair.