Ronald Frye: Alcoholic Lawyer Failed to Investigate

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Ronald Wayne Frye was sentenced to death for a 1993 CatawbaCounty murder. The jury that sentenced him to death did not know about the abuse that marked Frye’s childhood. This evidence was so strong that jurors who later learned about it said they would not have sentenced Frye to death had they known about it at the trial. Frye’s lawyers did not present the evidence because they failed to investigate their client’s background. One of his court-appointed lawyers admitted to drinking 12 shots of rum every night of the trial. Frye was executed on August 31, 2001.

In North Carolina, a death penalty trial is divided into two parts. Following the first part, known as the guilt or innocence phase, jurors decide whether to convict the defendant. If they return a guilty verdict to first degree murder, the trial moves into the second part, known as the sentencing phase. The same jurors hear both phases. The law requires attorneys to investigate their client’s background and present information to jurors in an effort to explain, but not excuse, the circumstances of the murder. At the conclusion of that phase, jurors decide whether to sentence the defendant to death or to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Ronnie Frye was one of three boys. His mother did not have the means or knowledge to raise them. His father abandoned his sons, who were hungry, dirty and undisciplined. At the age of 18 months, Ronnie was rushed to the hospital after drinking from a glass of kerosene that was customarily left sitting on the floor.

When Ronnie was about three-years-old, Frye’s mother gave two of her sons away to the first bidder. A couple appeared at the restaurant where she worked, she brought the boys out, and they were taken away. The new father turned out to be a violent alcoholic. He regularly used a bullwhip on Frye, leaving him curled up in a corner, beaten and bloodied.

It took six years for a teacher to finally notice the scars covering Frye’s body. The police were called, the abusive man was arrested, and Frye was sent to an orphanage. Photographs of Frye’s 9-year-old scarred body were used by the chief of police to teach rookie officers how to recognize child abuse.

The State stepped in, but awarded custody to the biological father who had deserted Frye at birth. Frye’s father was another abusive alcoholic. He dragged Frye out of bed to watch as he beat his stepmother. The stepmother left the home after a particularly severe beating. Neighbors reported Frye had been abandoned; his father wasn’t home, he was hungry, and the house was maggot-infested. After several calls, social services appeared. Frye was given back to the mother who had given him away as a toddler.

Frye never received any counseling for this chain of abuse and abandonment. Instead he sought self-medication—alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine. The downward spiral of drug addiction ended tragically in the brutal murder of Leroy Childress, for which Frye was deeply remorseful.

After Frye’s trial, his lawyer’s alcoholism became so publicly debilitating that he was later pulled off another death penalty case and sent to a detoxification facility. The attorney died recently of a liver-related illness.