As more and more innocent people are exonerated, sometimes after spending decades on death row, death penalty support and use have steadily fallen.
National and state polls show that death penalty support has reached historic lows. But perhaps the best measure of the death penalty’s popularity is how often it’s used. In North Carolina, the answer is almost never.
The state has not carried out an execution since 2006. The number of capital trials has declined from dozens each year in the 1990s to a handful today, as many prosecutors stopped seeking the death penalty. For those few prosecutors who do seek death sentences, juries often say no, returning life sentences instead. In six of the past ten years, NC juries have not handed down a single death sentence.
North Carolina no longer has the stomach for a punishment that threatens the innocent, preys on the vulnerable, and has proven itself both racist and error-prone. Our state should join the 26 others who have outlawed the death penalty or imposed official moratoriums.
Right now in North Carolina:
- In the past decade, death sentences have been imposed in just nine of NC’s 100 counties.
- Between 2010 and 2021, juries said no to the death penalty in 85 percent of NC’s capital trials.
- Just ten counties are responsible for nearly half of the people on NC’s death row.
- Polling shows that a majority of NC voters would prefer to replace the death penalty with other punishments. A 2013 statewide poll showed that a majority favor life sentences over death sentences. And a 2017 poll in Wake County found that 70 percent of voters would support a district attorney’s decision to stop seeking death.
The Death Penalty in NC Depends on Where You Are
Hover on a county to see the raw numbers that reveal the stark reality of the geographic disparity of the death penalty in our state. From the number of people living on death row to capital cases scheduled for trial, location matters. This disparity is largely driven by the power and discretion of locally elected district attorneys. View a larger version of this map.