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 at large.” Prominent among their rea­sons are the racial dis­par­i­ties seen in North Carolina’s use of the death penal­ty. Despite being just 22% of North Carolina’s res­i­dents, more than half of those on the state’s death row are Black. Of the 12 indi­vid­u­als exon­er­at­ed from death row in North Carolina, 11 are peo­ple are color.

Gov. Cooper’s oppor­tu­ni­ty to grant clemen­cy would not direct­ly result in the release of any pris­on­ers. The North Carolina state con­sti­tu­tion only grants the gov­er­nor the pow­er to short­en prison sen­tences. Thus, Gov. Cooper has the pow­er to com­mute death sen­tences to life sen­tences with or with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole, and unlike states like Louisiana, he does not need the rec­om­men­da­tion of a parole board before doing so.

Gov. Cooper has not made any com­ment about whether he is con­sid­er­ing using his clemen­cy pow­er. While some exec­u­tives view clemen­cy as a rem­e­dy for legal injus­tice, oth­ers see it pure­ly as an act of mer­cy. Former North Carolina Gov. Terry Sanford, who held the office from 1961 to 1965, saw his clemen­cy pow­er as a form of grace when he decid­ed to short­en the sen­tences of 29 pris­on­ers in 1961:

​“It falls to the gov­er­nor to blend mer­cy with jus­tice, as best he can, involv­ing human as well as legal con­sid­er­a­tions, in the light of all cir­cum­stances after the pas­sage of time, but before jus­tice is allowed to over­run mer­cy in the name of the pow­er of the state.”

Since 1977, three North Carolina gov­er­nors have grant­ed clemen­cy to five death-sen­tenced indi­vid­u­als. There have also been broad grants of clemen­cy from gov­er­nors in oth­er states. In 2003, for­mer Illinois Governor George Ryan par­doned four-death row pris­on­ers and com­mut­ed the sen­tences of 167 oth­ers, clear­ing the state’s death row. Most recent­ly in 2022, for­mer Oregon Governor Kate Brown com­mut­ed the sen­tences of all 17 indi­vid­u­als on the state’s death row before leav­ing office, call­ing the death penal­ty ​“both dys­func­tion­al and immoral.” Neither of these gov­er­nors suf­fered any sig­nif­i­cant back­lash from vot­ers as a result of their decisions. 

North Carolina has not car­ried out any exe­cu­tions since 2006, when law­suits regard­ing lethal injec­tion drugs paused fur­ther exe­cu­tions. Ongoing lit­i­ga­tion regard­ing appli­ca­tion of the Racial Justice Act (RJA) which per­mit­ted death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers to raise new claims of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion, cur­rent­ly pre­vents the gov­er­nor from sched­ul­ing any executions.

The cur­rent clemen­cy effort has the sup­port of at least twen­ty local and nation­al social jus­tice and civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions, who share a sense of urgency because Governor Cooper will leave office next year. Some can­di­dates for that office have already promised increased use of the death penal­ty if they are elect­ed. Kristie Puckett, Senior Project Manager with Forward Justice, told a crowd of activists at a ral­ly that Gov. Cooper is their last hope. ​“We can’t trust our leg­is­la­ture. We can’t trust the courts… And so we are forced to rely on Governor Cooper.”