Last week, Washington became the 20th state to end the death penalty after its Supreme Court ruled that capital punishment is arbitrary and racially biased. If those are reasons to outlaw the death penalty, then it is surely time for the North Carolina death penalty to go. If anything, the death penalty in NC is more racist, more arbitrary, and threatens the lives of far more people.
Another state dumps the death penalty
Delaware is the 20th state to make life without parole its maximum punishment, and the eighth since 2008. But those numbers don’t tell the whole story about just how obsolete the death penalty has become. Another 11 states have not carried out an execution in at least a decade – and North Carolina is one of them.
N.C. prosecutor who sent 5 to death row: It’s time to end death penalty
Twenty five years ago, as an assistant district attorney in Forsyth County, Vince Rabil helped put Blanche Taylor Moore on death row. Today, Rabil says it is time to end the death penalty and calls Moore — a frail 82-year-old still sitting on death row — “a living monument to the failure of a vanishing legal remedy.”
Former AG who sent inmates to execution: ‘I’m about to change my mind’ on the death penalty
Edmisten says death penalty is as arbitrary as “Russian roulette.” His comments come two weeks after Rep. Jon Hardister became the first N.C. Republican legislator to announce his opposition to the death penalty. Support for the death penalty is quickly eroding in N.C.
New report: Reckless use of death penalty in N.C. threatens the innocent
What if we told you that almost every murder in N.C. is charged capitally? That cases are declared capital before police have completed thorough investigations? That the threat of death is used to bully people into pleading guilty, even though they might be innocent? These are the revelations in a new report from CDPL.
Death penalty’s demise: Conservative Nebraska votes to repeal
This is just one more sign that the death penalty is on borrowed time, nationally and in North Carolina. Nineteen states have now abolished it, several more have active repeal campaigns, and the vast majority of U.S. states, including North Carolina, are no longer carrying out executions.
Another state walks away from death penalty
You know the death penalty is on its last gasp when one of the most heavily Republican states in the nation votes to repeal it. That’s what happened this week in Nebraska, where legislators voted overwhelmingly to replace the death penalty with life in prison without parole.
Gov. takes bold action, executions halt in PA
Have you heard the good news from Pennsylvania? Newly elected Gov. Tom Wolf has announced a suspension of executions. This is a courageous move in a state with 186 people on death row, and where an execution was scheduled for March 4. Wolf said he based his decision in part on the wave of exonerations […]
Asheville residents say ‘Yes!’ to halting executions
Yet another sign of how attitudes toward the death penalty are changing… Recently, the Asheville Citizen-Times asked its readers a simple question: Do you support a death penalty moratorium? The answer was a landslide: Yes!
Finally, a D.A. speaks death penalty truth
We should not underestimate the bravery it took for Johnson Britt to not just stand up for justice for Henry McCollum and his brother, Leon Brown, but to also speak the truth about the death penalty: that it serves no good purpose in our criminal justice system.