Joe Freeman Britt, a flamboyant district attorney from North Carolina who notoriously and proudly wore the title of the country's "deadliest prosecutor" by winning dozens of death-row convictions in his rural district, died April 6 in his home town of Lumberton, N.C. He was 80.
The death was first reported in North Carolina media outlets. The cause of death was not disclosed.
Britt took office as a district attorney in 1974, quickly building a reputation as a tenacious prosecutor in a rural area of eastern North Carolina that included Robeson and Scotland counties.
During the previous 27 years, no one in the two counties had been sentenced to death. After just one year on the job, Britt had won more death-row convictions than any other prosecutor in the country.
"I'm not some hick prosecutor just railroading these people away," Britt told Newsweek magazine in 1975. "I don't like to use words like crusade, but I'm doing something I like doing that needs to be done."
Robeson County had a population of about 100,000, equally divided among black, white and American Indian residents. It was one of the poorest regions in North Carolina, with a thriving drug trade and the state's highest murder rate.
The 6-foot-6 Britt was an intimidating courtroom presence, powerfully built with a shock of wavy hair and a flair for oratory, highlighted by his booming baritone voice. He brandished the bloody clothing of murder victims before the jury, waved a Bible in his hand and spoke as if channeling the voices of victims.
"That poor victim lying six feet underground has nobody to speak for him but me," he told Newsweek, "and nobody to hear his side but 12 jurors."
As a college student, Britt had campaigned against the death penalty, but after becoming a district attorney, he changed his mind.
He won a designation in the Guinness Book of Records as "the deadliest prosecutor."
Britt appeared on CBS's "60 Minutes" and led training sessions throughout the country to teach other prosecutors how to win convictions. "Go after them and tear that jugular out," he said in a session filmed by "60 Minutes."
Britt ultimately won 47 death-sentence convictions. Because of court rulings, appeals and overturned sentences, only two of the people he prosecuted were put to death.
Despite Britt's dramatic effectiveness as a prosecutor, some of his practices drew criticism from other lawyers and outside observers.
"He's a fair man who treats everyone the same," one defense attorney told the New York Times in 1988. "He's mean to everyone."
A 1983 study by an organization investigating justice in rural America found that Britt's near-total control of the court system in Robeson and Scotland counties led to "a widespread and serious denial of [the] rights" of poor defendants.
Bails were set unreasonably high, the study found, and the court calendar-set by Britt-often forced defendants to wait for weeks before their cases were heard. Minority defendants were prosecuted at higher rates, and many were improperly told that they would have to repay the state if they asked for a court-appointed lawyer.
After 14 years as a prosecutor, Britt ran for election as a superior-court judge. Britt won his judgeship and presided for seven years over the same court in which he had been chief prosecutor. After serving as judge, Britt had a private practice as a defense attorney before retiring in 2006.