Coleman seeks clemency for death row inmate

Duke Law Professor James Coleman met yesterday with North Carolina’s Governor Mike Easley to plead for clemency for convicted murderer Guy La Grande.

La Grande is scheduled to die by lethal injection on Dec. 1 if last minute court appeals and pleas to Easley for clemency fail.

From today’s Raleigh News & Observer, “Lawyers lobby for killer’s life:”

Convicted murderer Guy LeGrande's attorneys hope that Gov. Mike Easley will spare LeGrande's life because his case is similar to that of the only death row inmate to whom Easley has granted clemency.

On Tuesday, Easley listened to arguments from prosecutors and defense attorneys about whether LeGrande should die by lethal injection or spend the rest of his life in prison.

LeGrande, 47, is scheduled to be executed Dec. 1 at Raleigh's Central Prison for the 1993 shooting of Ellen Munford in Stanly County, east of Charlotte.

While prosecutors depicted LeGrande as a calculating killer-for-hire, LeGrande's attorneys described him as a severely mentally ill man who was chosen to commit the crime and prosecuted capitally because of his race. The defense team hopes the racial parallels between LeGrande's case and that of Robert Bacon Jr. will sway the governor.

Bacon, who is black, was sentenced to death for the 1987 stabbing of his lover's husband. His co-defendant, Bonnie Sue Clark, a white woman who recruited Bacon to kill her husband, got a lesser sentence and is eligible for parole. In October 2001, Easley commuted Bacon's sentence to life in prison -- the only time he has granted clemency.

Since taking office in January 2001, Easley has denied clemency for 27 death row inmates, who have all been executed.

Tommy Munford, the victim's estranged husband, recruited LeGrande to do the killing in exchange for $6,500. Munford, who is white, is eligible for a parole hearing in January. Prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for his testimony against LeGrande.

Both Bacon and LeGrande were sentenced to death by all-white juries. In both cases, Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP's board of directors, wrote a letter to Easley asking for clemency.

In comparison to Bacon's clemency claim, "this is a much more deserving case," said Duke University law professor Jim Coleman, who was one of Bacon's attorneys and now represents LeGrande. [The rest of the story follows here.]

Coleman has represented pro bono many death row inmates. He serves as a faculty advisor to Duke Law School’s Innocence Project which gives students an opportunity to work of cases of convicted felons who likely are actually innocent.

Back on June 13 when Coleman’s letter calling for DA Mike Nifong to step aside and allow a special prosecutor to take charge of the Duke lacrosse case was published, KC Johnson posted on the latter and also provided information about Coleman’s work on behalf of inmates thought likely to have been wrongly convicted.