Appeals court submission exposes racial toxicity in case of Black man John Balentine, sentenced to death for 1999 triple murder
Accompanying the package of new evidence, Balentine’s current legal team has filedwhich outlines the many disturbing anomalies behind his death sentence. The “justifiable lynching” note written by his own defense lawyers – which the petition decries as “unconscionable” and “stunning in its disgust for their client” – is just one example of the racial toxicity that the lawyers argue permeated the proceedings.
Detectives found a note at the crime scene in which Caylor had written: “I am gowing to kill the neger”. He added the number 187 – hip-hop slang for “murder” based onPhotograph: John Balentine appeals petition The trial prosecutor removed from the pool of potential jurors the only two African Americans available – creating an exclusively white jury. When it was put to the prosecutor that the strikes were discriminatory – and thus unlawful under the US constitution – he countered that he had based his decision on an innocent question.
“We found compelling evidence of unbelievable poverty in John’s childhood, horrific physical and sexual abuse as a child, evidence that he suffered from long-term brain damage – none of it presented to the jury because his defense lawyers did such a terrible job. That’s why John ended up on death row.”
Like Juror Eight, the character played by Henry Fonda in Sidney Lumet’s celebrated film, England managed to sway the votes of several of his fellow jurors. Unlike Juror Eight, however, he used his formidable powers of persuasion not to spare the defendant, but to send him to death row. England went on to join the Marine Corps. In a legal declaration in May 2021, just three weeks before he died, he said that his combat experiences had informed his attitude as foreperson at Balentine’s trial.
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