RIP Brian Baldwin: death penalty news---ALABAMA 


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My sincere thanks to all who intervened on Brian's behalf. 
May Brian rest in peace.

Francis A. Boyle
Professor of International Law
Board of Directors, Amnesty International USA (1988-92)

6-18-99----

ALABAMA:      (execution)

One of 2 men convicted of kidnapping, torturing and killing a
16-year-old girl after they escaped from a North Carolina prison camp
was executed in the electric chair early Friday.

Brian K. Baldwin, 40, was pronounced dead at 12:29 a.m. His accomplice,
Edward Horsley, was executed in 1996.

The man black leaders and human-rights advocates described as a victim of
racial injustice spoke to the warden before he died, softly saying "it's
OK."

Baldwin and Horsley fled a North Carolina prison camp in March 1977,
minutes before they abducted Naomi Rolon, who was on the way to visit her
father in a hospital. She was choked, stabbed and sexually assaulted
before being driven to Alabama, prosecutors said.

Miss Rolon was eventually killed with a hatchet. Prosecutors said Baldwin
admitted striking the fatal blow, but later said Horsley wielded the
hatchet.

Defense attorneys, along with former President Jimmy Carter, Coretta
Scott King and members of the Congressional Black Caucus, said Baldwin
was a victim of racism in the judicial system. Among other things, they
said the black inmate, accused in the slaying of a white girl, was
convicted by an all-white jury in which potential black jurors were
eliminated by prosecutors.

"There is no doubt that racial prejudice was a factor in both his trial
and his death sentence," Carter wrote to Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman.

Siegelman said he was "deeply troubled" by some aspects of the case but
declined to grant clemency.

Defense lawyers also claimed that Baldwin was beaten into confessing in a
county and state dominated by white law officers.

Nathaniel Manzie, the only black deputy in neighboring Wilcox County in
1977, recently said in a sworn statement that white officers beat Baldwin
to get him to confess. But Manzie, now 75 and in a Selma nursing home,
told a judge Monday he did not witness a beating.

Baldwin becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death in Alabama
this year, and the 18th overall since the state resumed executions in
1983.

Baldwin also becomes the 52nd condemned inmate to be put to death this
year in the USA, and the 552nd overall since America resumed capital
punishment on Jan. 17, 1977.

(sources:  Associated Press & Rick Halperin)
 
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