Legally, there was a strong argument that even though Jimmy was guilty, he should never have been sentenced to death. The jury that sentenced him didn’t know that this impulsive crime was in part the product of several traumatic brain injuries, which began in childhood. If Jimmy were retried now, he would never receive a death sentence. No Buncombe jury has sentenced anyone to death since 2000.
Why most of N.C.’s death row inmates never should have gotten the death penalty
After 12 years without an execution, many people believe the North Carolina death penalty is dead. That might be true — if it weren’t for the more than 140 people still on death row. A new report shows that, by today’s standards, most of them shouldn’t be there.
N.C. Supreme Court overturns death sentence for disabled man
Even with the number of death sentences slowed to a trickle, our state still can’t get it right in death penalty cases. The N.C. Supreme Court has just overturned the sentence of of a death row prisoner from Forsyth County, saying there was ample evidence that he had intellectual disabilities and mental illness that should have moved the jury to spare him from execution.
In Charleston shootings, death penalty trial only causes more pain
Dylann Roof could have been quietly and simply sent to prison for the rest of his life. Instead, his death penalty trial has become an international spectacle where, acting as his own lawyer, he will get to cross examine survivors and victims’ families. Even in the worst crimes, the death penalty serves no one.
Former N.C. Chief Justice: I have lost faith in the death penalty
I. Beverly Lake says he has “seen too much” and now believes the death penalty is unconstitutional. It’s a striking turnaround for a judge who affirmed 185 N.C. death sentences.
Executing intellectually disabled inmates is unconstitutional, but N.C. tries anyway
Timothy Richardson is an adult who functions at the level of an 11 or 12 year old. Despite his clear intellectual disability, N.C. is still fighting for his execution.
The strongest punishment for the weakest among us
On trial for his life, Kenneth Neal was assigned a recently convicted child pornographer for a defense attorney. Just like the poor, intellectually disabled Brendan Dassey in Making A Murderer, Neal got stuck with a sub-par attorney who sabotaged his chance for a fair trial. The latest in NCCADP’s stories from death row.
Traumatized veterans get no mercy in N.C.
Just in time for Veterans Day, a sobering new report shows that North Carolina is one of many states that routinely condemns veterans to death and executes them, with little regard for the trauma they endured while serving our country. Twenty-four of North Carolina’s 148 death row inmates are military veterans. Six veterans have been executed.
Americans say it’s wrong to execute mentally ill. States do it anyway.
A poll shows Americans overwhelmingly oppose the death penalty for people with mental illness. Yet, a delusional man barely escaped execution in Texas, and many severely mentally ill inmates remain on N.C.’s death row.
Another innocent released from N.C. prison
Yet another innocent man is exonerated after more than three decades in prison for murder. How many will it take before our state accepts that systemic changes are needed? And that the death penalty is unconscionable in a system that cannot even convict the right people?