NDRAN At Work On
The Road
By Claudia Whitman - Executive Director of NDRAN
In February 2005, Montego
King was arrested and charged with the murder of Taft Donta Payne, and assault
with a deadly weapon with intent to kill for the wounding of two other
individuals. He had come to a crack house to get paid for a stereo that some of
the inhabitants had stolen from his car; he was assaulted and in the course of a
fight, he picked up a gun on the ground and started shooting. The result was the
death of a 17 year old boy, a leg wound to another individual, and a grazing
wound on the back of a third. People in the apartment claimed the gun was his;
Mr. King has always denied this and says he picked up the gun and shot wildly in
self-defense.
This event took place in
Winston-Salem, NC in a county where the prosecutor generally seeks the death
penalty and is often successful in obtaining it. Mr. King was to be charged with
capital murder when he was offered a plea in April 2007 for second-degree
murder. He almost took the plea and then backed out, still feeling that his
offense was the result of fearing for his life and that he should have been
offered a lesser plea.
Right after he turned down
this plea Mr. King contacted NDRAN and asked for help. He had lawyers he felt
were not listening to him and rarely shared information as to how they intended
to proceed. Over the course of the next year, NDRAN contacted lawyers and
capital defense projects in NC while also reading all legal documents in the
case. In early spring of 2008 Mr. King was able to petition the court for a new
legal team and was assigned Duane Bryant as head defense lawyer. He decided to
keep me on the team as well as the excellent mitigation specialist who had
worked with Mr. King since his incarceration. After a very thorough
investigation by Mr. Bryant, weekly meetings with Mr. King, meetings with the
family, discussion with me and the mitigation specialist and with the
prosecutor, it was determined that the State had a good enough case to obtain a
conviction. The gun was never found to determine ownership; the eyewitnesses,
although they were people from the crack house, were ready to testify that the
gun was Mr. King’s, and various other witnesses had information to suggest that
Mr. King was in a rage mode and capable of committing murder. The prosecutor did
offer a second-degree plea again, but nothing less, and this plea carried a
minimum of nearly 20 years before parole eligibility.
As the summer of ‘08 rolled
on, Mr. King was thinking he might take his chances and go to trial. Our team
believed this would be disastrous and could easily end in a death sentence. His
attorney asked me to intercede with a letter, since, for some reason, I had
become the person he trusted. I wrote him a letter giving him my views on his
likelihood of conviction, the effect it would have on his family, and the
possibility of being productive and positive in prison and getting out with an
opportunity to get on with his life. He called me shortly after receiving this
letter with his decision to take the plea. He said that the last paragraph of my
letter had made him decide to choose life over the probability of a death
sentence.
Early in August, I traveled
to Winston-Salem, met with him twice and stood in court as he accepted a plea to
2nd degree murder with a sentence of a minimum of 215 months. With credit for
the 3 ½ years he already had served, he will be eligible for parole in about 14
½ years. He felt good about his decision and was already thinking about the
counseling he will receive, the courses on drug addiction he will take, and the
training for a post-prison career.
For the team, it was a huge
success. We felt we had saved a life. It was Montego who called the lawyer to
say he wanted to take the plea, not the lawyer telling him what he needed to do.
He understood his situation, the virtual impossibility of proving that he had
not brought a gun to deal with his problems, and he understood the consequences
of either of his choices. He shared his fears and concerns. He met with his
family and discussed his intentions and in the end, he became a hero to all of
us. He was looking at nearly 15 years in prison and the roller coaster ride this
sentence entails, but he was also looking at the opportunity to make something
of his life. Until now he had been in and out of youth detention centers and
prison and was using crack. As he stood in front of the judge and his victim’s
mother, he read a letter he had written to Donta Payne’s mom. He had kept a
picture of Donta in his bible since his incarceration and had asked for
forgiveness every day as part of his prayers.
NDRAN rarely gets cases
before trial, but when we do, it is an amazing opportunity to keep a death
sentence from happening and this is an intrinsic part of our work. Once a person
is sentenced to death, barring proof of actual innocence, it is extremely
difficult to avoid the sentence being carried out. Montego King looked for help
in a variety of places and, luckily, he found NDRAN in time that we could be
effective in his defense and, ultimately, in his decision to take the best deal
he could get and to serve his time with dignity and a goal towards a better
life, both inside and out.
