As North Carolina Juries Reject Death Penalty, Legislators Accused of Playing Politics With Executions

For the third time since 2012, no one in North Carolina was sen­tenced to death in 2017. All four tri­als in 2017 in which pros­e­cu­tors sought a death sen­tence end­ed with a jury either acquit­ting the defen­dant of cap­i­tal mur­der or return­ing a less­er sen­tence. Despite the his­tor­i­cal decline in death sen­tenc­ing in North Carolina, two state leg­isla­tive lead­ers, in a let­ter derid­ed by edi­to­r­i­al boards as polit­i­cal pos­tur­ing, used the recent killing of three prison guards to demand that Governor Roy Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein ​“restart” exe­cu­tions in the state. House Speaker Tim Moore (pic­tured, left) and Senate President pro-tem Phil Berger (pic­tured, right), claimed that Cooper’s and Stein’s pur­port­ed ​“indif­fer­ence and fail­ure to fight the mora­to­ri­um [on exe­cu­tions in North Carolina] endan­gers the lives of prison employ­ees in close prox­im­i­ty to hard­ened mur­der­ers with noth­ing left to lose, who see no pos­si­bil­i­ty they will face exe­cu­tion for killing again.” Editorial reac­tion to the leg­is­la­tors’ com­ments was swift and sharp. The Greensboro News and Record called the accu­sa­tion in the let­ter ​“a vul­gar insin­u­a­tion unsup­port­ed by facts.” The Charlotte Observer edi­to­ri­al­ized that the leg­isla­tive lead­ers were ​“seek­ing to politi­cize the tragedy rather than effec­tive­ly rem­e­dy the con­di­tions that make the state’s pris­ons so dan­ger­ous for cor­rec­tion­al offi­cers.” Their actions, the paper said, were akin to ​“cre­at­ing and tol­er­at­ing the con­di­tions that allow inmates to kill prison work­ers, then blam­ing the offi­cers’ deaths on the gov­er­nor whose admin­is­tra­tion is try­ing to actu­al­ly address the prob­lem.” Raleigh’s News and Observer edi­to­r­i­al board called Moore and Berger’s let­ter ​“absurd,” ​“shame­less,” and a ​“polit­i­cal gam­bit” that was ​“demagogu[ing] the death penal­ty.” It wrote, “[n]either the gov­er­nor nor the AG can restart the death penal­ty, which is under legal chal­lenge on a mul­ti­tude of grounds, as it is in many states. That’s why no one has been put to death by the state in more than 10 years. … [A]s long as legal chal­lenges are pend­ing, the death penal­ty can’t be restart­ed as if the task were just like turn­ing on a light switch.” A Capitol Broadcasting Company edi­to­r­i­al called the leg­is­la­tors’ charges “[c]ynical and shame­ful” ​“pathet­ic,” and ​“polit­i­cal pos­tur­ing.” The com­pa­ny said, ​“Regardless of how any­body feels about cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment … , it will do NOTHING to help make our pris­ons any more secure or help to make it safer for guards and oth­er per­son­nel who have to work inside them.” Gretchen M. Engel, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Center for Death Penalty Litigation, pro­vid­ed con­text for North Carolina’s use of the death penal­ty, not­ing that “[m]ore than three-quar­ters of death row inmates were sen­tenced at least 15 years ago, in an era when North Carolina juries sen­tenced to death dozens of peo­ple a year under less-enlight­ened laws. … Defendants on tri­al for their lives did not have basic pro­tec­tions such as qual­i­fied attor­neys or laws requir­ing that con­fes­sions be record­ed.” She cred­its high-pro­file exon­er­a­tions, like that of Henry McCollum, for con­tribut­ing to the reduc­tion in death sen­tences in the state. ​“There are some elect­ed offi­cials in North Carolina who still like to talk about the death penal­ty for polit­i­cal pur­pos­es, but that’s about the only way it’s being used any­more,” Engel said. Rob Schofield of NC Policy Watch said, ​“Berger and Moore would do much more for the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of prison per­son­nel if they would invest ade­quate resources in our corrections system.”

(G. Engel, ​“In 2017, no new death sen­tences and a frail and aging N.C. death row,” The Herald Sun, December 15, 2017; J. Billman, ​“Nobody in North Carolina Was Sentenced to Death in 2017,” Indy Week, December 14, 2017; Editorial, ​“Berger and Moore’s polit­i­cal pos­tur­ing shames sac­ri­fice of late N.C. prison work­ers,” Capitol Broadcasting Company, WRAL​.com, December 13, 2017; Editorial, ​“Moore and Berger play pol­i­tics with the NC death penal­ty,” The News & Observer, December 12, 2017; Editorial, ​“Phil Berger and Tim Moore play pol­i­tics in the face of tragedy,” Charlotte Observer, December 11, 2017; R. Schofield, ​“Shameless leg­isla­tive pos­tur­ing on the death penal­ty,” NC Policy Watch, December 19, 2017; Editorial, ​“Our Opinion: Execution pol­i­tics,” Greensboro News & Record, December 20, 2017.) See Sentencing and 2017 Year End Report.