Woodson v. North Carolina

According to court testimony, the events involving James Tyrone Woodson and three others on 3 June 1974 took place as follows. Woodson had been drinking heavily when at 9:30 p.m. Luby Waxton and Leonard Tucker arrived at his trailer. Woodson went out to meet him, at which time a belligerent Waxton struck him on the face and threatened to kill him if he did not join the other two in a robbery. Woodson got in the car with them, and they drove to Waxton's trailer, where they were met by Johnnie Lee Carroll. Waxton got his nickel-plated derringer, and Tucker gave Woodson a rifle; then the four men drove to a convenience store in a single vehicle.

Upon arrival, Tucker and Waxton entered the store while Carroll and Woodson remained in the car as lookouts. Inside the store, Tucker bought a pack of cigarettes, then Waxton approached the clerk and also asked for a pack; but when she went to give them to him, he withdrew his derringer from his hip pocket and shot her at point-blank range. Waxton removed the money from the cash register and gave it to Tucker, who rushed past an entering customer to the parking lot. From outside, Tucker heard a shot, and moments later Waxton appearing holding a wad of paper money. The four men drove away.

As it later turned out, the customer had been wounded seriously, but the cashier was dead, making this a first-degree murder case. At the trial, Tucker and Carroll testified for the prosecution in return for lesser sentences. Waxton, who claimed that Tucker, and not himself, had shot the cashier and the customer, also tried to get a reduced sentence. Woodson, on the other hand, held that he had been coerced by Waxton into riding in the car to the store that night, and therefore he refused to plead guilty to any offense. Both Woodson and Waxton were found guilty and, according to a recently adopted North Carolina law that made a death sentence mandatory in first-degree murder cases, were sentenced to death.

When the case came before the Supreme Court, the human-rights organization Amnesty International filed an amicus curiae brief on behalf of Woodson and Waxton. Solicitor General Robert Bork filed an amicus curiae brief for the United States on behalf of the respondents.