State & Federal
North Carolina
Timeline
1973 - North Carolina reinstates the death penalty following Furman v. Georgia.
1974 - The North Carolina legislature enacts a mandatory death penalty statute.
1977 - The U.S. Supreme Court strikes down North Carolina’s mandatory death sentencing scheme in Woodson v. North Carolina.
2001 - The Indigent Services Commission is founded, ensuring that defense counsels are properly trained, educated, and qualified. The ISC is responsible for the allocation of resources for experts, investigators, and other expenses incurred in defending a capital trial.
2006 - The Innocence Inquiry Commission is created by the North Carolina General Assembly, responsible for reviewing innocence claims and conducting hearings.
2009 - North Carolina passes the Racial Justice Act, which prohibits seeking or imposing the death penalty on the basis of race.
2013 - North Carolina legislature repeals the Racial Justice Act.
2015 - North Carolina Supreme Court vacates rulings that reduced four death row prisoners’ sentences to life without parole under the state’s Racial Justice Act.
2018 - North Carolina Supreme Court agrees to hear appeals from three of the four death row prisoners whose sentences were reduced and then reinstated.
2019 - North Carolina imposes first death sentence in more than a decade when a capital sentencing jury votes to sentence Seaga Gillard to death.\
2019 - North Carolina Supreme Court hears arguments on whether the state may retroactively apply the legislative repeal of the Racial Justice Act in 2013, restoring the rights of approximately 140 death row prisoners seeking redress of death sentences they claim were affected by racial bias.
2020 - North Carolina Supreme Court restores life sentences given to three of the death row prisoners whose sentences were reduced and then reinstated following the 2013 repeal of the Racial Justice Act.
2021 - A North Carolina judge orders prosecutors to disclose decades worth of data pertaining to jury selection in capital cases.
2022 - North Carolina ACLU lawyers file a challenge to the method in which jurors are selected, arguing that the process of “death qualification” produces racially and sexually unrepresentative juries.
Notable Exonerations
Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, two brothers who were convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1984, were freed in 2014 because of evidence uncovered by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission. McCollum was 19 and Brown was 15 when they confessed to the rape and murder of 11-year-old Sabrina Buie. Both men are intellectually disabled - McCollum has an IQ in the 60s and Brown has scored as low as 49 on IQ tests. McCollum and Brown have maintained their innocence since their trial, saying they were unaware they were signing a confession.
Jonathon Hoffman, a black man charged with killing a white man, was tried and convicted by an all-white jury despite the fact that no physical evidence connected him to the murder of Danny Cook. The prosecutors in his case withheld evidence that was favorable to Hoffman. Neither the defense attorney nor the judge knew of a deal in which prosecutors paid Hoffman’s cousin to testify against him—an omission that resulted in the criminal investigation of Ken Honeycutt and Scott Brewer, the prosecutors in the original trial. Charges were dismissed in 2007, after Hoffman had spent 12 years on death row.
Glen Edward Chapman was granted a new trial in 2007, due to withheld evidence, “lost, misplaced or destroyed” documents, the use of weak, circumstantial evidence, false testimony by the lead investigator, and ineffective assistance of defense counsel. There was also new information from a forensic pathologist that raised doubts as to whether the murder for which Chapman was convicted was a homicide or caused by an overdose of drugs. Chapman was released in 2008, when charges against him were dropped.
Levon “Bo” Jones’ conviction was overturned due to his defense counsel’s “constitutionally deficient” performance. In April 2008, shortly before a retrial was set to begin, Jones’ new defense team filed an affidavit in which the star witness from his first trial said, “Much of what I testified to was simply not true.” Jones spent 15 years on death row, and was released in May 2008
Milestones in Abolition/Reinstatement
Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia, invalidating all death sentences nationwide, the North Carolina Supreme Court reviewed North Carolina’s death penalty statute in 1973 in State v. Waddell. The Waddell court held that the unconstitutionality of North Carolina’s death penalty statute could be resolved by severing the portion of the statute that allowed a jury to recommend either a life sentence or a death sentence. The decision therefore made future death sentences mandatory. In 1974, the North Carolina legislature followed the Waddell decision by enacting a mandatory death penalty statute.
Three years later, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down North Carolina’s mandatory death sentencing scheme in Woodson v. North Carolina. The North Carolina legislature responded by enacting a new death penalty statute that took effect on June 1, 1977.
In August 2009, North Carolina passed the Racial Justice Act, which prohibited seeking or imposing the death penalty on the basis of race, included the use of statewide statistical evidence to show a pattern of racial discrimination, and applied retroactively for one year.
Kentucky was the first state to pass a Racial Justice Act, though NC’s RJA differed from Kentucky’s as it allowed for retroactive application and also permitted the use of statistical evidence to show that race was a “significant factor in decisions to seek or impose the sentence of death in the county, the prosecutorial district, or the State at large at the time the death sentence was sought or imposed.”
In 2013, the legislature repealed the Racial Justice Act. Prior to repeal, four inmates had been granted relief under the act, but those decisions were vacated by the North Carolina Supreme Court in December 2015.
North Carolina “Firsts”
Indigent Services Commission, created in July, 2001, developed standards governing the qualifications of defense counsel, required counsel to seek consultations with the Center for Death Penalty Litigation prior to trial, took over the responsibility of appointing and compensating counsel through the Office of the Capital Defender, provided increased training and supervision of attorneys, and took over responsibility for allocating the resources for experts, investigators, and other expenses incurred in defending a capital trial.
Innocence Inquiry Commission
The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission is the first of its kind in the nation. The Commission was created by the North Carolina General Assembly in 2006 and began operating in 2007. Since then, the Commission has reviewed hundreds of innocence claims and conducted multiple hearings. On February 17, 2010, Gregory Taylor was the first person to be exonerated by this unique process. Mr. Taylor was declared innocent by a panel of three judges after serving 17 years for a murder that he did not commit.
Resources
- North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty
- Center for Death Penalty Litigation
- Department of Corrections
- North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys
- Indigent Defense Services
- Victims’ services
- The Death Penalty in North Carolina: A Summary of the Data and Scientific Studies by Dr. Matthew Robinson of Appalachian State University
- People of Faith Against the Death Penalty
North Carolina Execution Totals Since 1976
News & Developments
News
Mar 14, 2024
North Carolina Racial Justice Act Hearing Concludes in Hasson Bacote Case
On Friday, March 8, 2024 a Johnston County trial court concluded a historic hearing regarding the claims of Hasson Bacote, a death-sentenced prisoner in North Carolina, that racial discrimination in jury selection played a role in his 2009 capital sentencing. The case, which is being reviewed pursuant to North Carolina’s 2009 Racial Justice Act (RJA), could have implications for more than 100 other death row prisoners who have pending claims under the Act.
Read MoreFeb 26, 2024
North Carolina Trial Court Will Hear New Evidence of Racial Bias in Death Row Prisoner’s Racial Justice Act Claim
Beginning February 28, 2024, a Johnston County, North Carolina, trial court will hear death row prisoner Hasson Bacote’s claims that racial discrimination in jury selection played a role in his capital sentencing. In 2009, North Carolina passed the Racial Justice Act (RJA), which allowed death-sentenced prisoners to challenge their sentences if they could demonstrate that race played a role in their sentencing and jury selection. Sentenced to death in 2009 by a nearly all-white jury, Mr. Bacote, and nearly all other death row prisoners in the state, filed a claim…
Read MoreDec 11, 2023
Activists Call on North Carolina Governor to Commute Death Row “As an Act of Racial Justice”
In North Carolina, a coalition of activists is calling on Governor Roy Cooper to commute the death sentences of 136 people “as an act of racial justice” before he leaves office in 2024. Edward “Ed” Chapman, a death row exoneree who spent 14 years on death row, along with other advocates with the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, are urging Gov. Cooper to grant clemency to all death-sentenced individuals in North Carolina “because of the injustices of the death penalty and North Carolina’s criminal legal system…
Read MoreNov 10, 2023
A Veterans Day Review: Uneven Progress Understanding the Role of Military Service in Capital Crimes
In 2015, DPIC’s Battle Scars report brought worldwide attention to the issue of military veterans on death row. DPIC found approximately 300 veterans incarcerated under a sentence of death, representing at least 10% of death row, and many more who had been executed. Since that report, research and understanding about Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), substance use disorders, and mental illness among veterans has only grown. A 2023 survey of members of the Wounded Warrior Project found that 76% of servicemembers who incurred a mental or physical…
Read MoreJan 26, 2023
Family Members of Murder Victims Call on North Carolina, Nevada to Commute States’ Death Rows
In North Carolina and Nevada, family members of murder victims are speaking out against the death penalty, encouraging officials in both states to commute their death row.
Read MoreDec 06, 2022
Midterm Elections: Moratorium Supporters, Reform Prosecutors Post Gains Despite Massive Campaign Efforts to Tie Reformers to Surge in Violent Crime
In a year that featured massive campaign advertising attempting to portray legal reformers as responsible for increases in violent crime, candidates committed to criminal legal reform or who promised to continue statewide moratoria on executions posted key election wins in the 2022 midterm elections. Defying a pre-election narrative forecasting a backlash against progressive prosecutors and conventional wisdom that fear of crime drives political outcomes, reform prosecutors were re-elected to office and gained new footholds in counties across the country.
Read MoreOct 20, 2022
Commentary: North Carolina’s Use of Death Qualification Disenfranchises Black People From Serving on Death Penalty Juries
The process of death qualification, which excludes people who oppose the death penalty from serving on capital juries, is racially discriminatory, civil rights advocate Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II wrote in an October 10, 2022 op-ed.
Read MoreSep 23, 2022
North Carolina ACLU Challenges Death Qualification of Jurors as Racially and Sexually Discriminatory
Lawyers for a North Carolina capital defendant have filed a sweeping challenge to the method by which death-penalty jurors are empaneled, arguing that the combination of a process known as “death qualification” and discretionary jury strikes produces a jury so racially and sexually unrepresentative that it violates a defendant’s right to a fair trial.
Read MoreJul 13, 2022
Marcus Robinson Remembered for Pioneering Racial Justice Case
Marcus Robinson (pictured), the first person to be granted relief under North Carolina’s trailblazing Racial Justice Act, has died. Robinson, who was sentenced to death in 1994 for a crime he committed shortly after turning 18, died June 9, 2022. He was 49 years old.
Read MoreJul 15, 2021
Hidden Costs: Liability Judgments for Wrongful Capital Prosecutions Cost Taxpayers in Death-Penalty States Hundreds of Millions of Dollars
Studies have consistently found that a system of criminal law in which the death penalty is available as a punishment is far more expensive than a system in which the most severe punishment is life without parole or a long prison term. Now, as the number of murder exonerations mounts across the United States, a previously hidden cost is emerging: the cost of liability for police and prosecutorial misconduct associated with the wrongful use or threatened use of the death penalty.
Read MoreJun 28, 2021
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of June 21, 2021
NEWS (6/25/21) — Alabama: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has affirmed an Alabama federal district court decision dismissing James Barber’s habeas corpus challenge to his conviction and death sentence. In an unsigned, unpublished opinion, the appeals court denied Barber’s claim that his lawyers provided ineffective representation in the penalty phase of his capital trial by failing to investigate and present mitigating evidence to the jury.
Read More