A recent edi­to­r­i­al in The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) has crit­i­cized leg­isla­tive efforts to restart North Carolina’s death penal­ty as ​“ret­ro­gres­sive” and ​“macabre.” The edi­to­r­i­al oppos­es a bill that would allow exe­cu­tions to resume in North Carolina by ​“expand­ing the list of med­ical per­son­nel who can mon­i­tor exe­cu­tions.” In 2007, the North Carolina Medical Board said that doc­tor par­tic­i­pa­tion in exe­cu­tions vio­lates pro­fes­sion­al ethics, effec­tive­ly block­ing any doc­tors from par­tic­i­pat­ing in exe­cu­tions. The new law would allow physi­cian assis­tants, nurs­es, and emer­gency med­ical tech­ni­cians to over­see exe­cu­tions in place of a doc­tor. The edi­to­r­i­al said, ​“The death penal­ty is unnec­es­sary, unjust and irre­versible. Its use now is only an act of vengeance against a few pris­on­ers who hap­pened to be con­vict­ed in death penal­ty states and whose lawyers failed to nego­ti­ate the many legal options that could have spared them.” It goes on to crit­i­cize the arbi­trari­ness of the death penal­ty: ​“The errat­ic appli­ca­tion of the death penal­ty makes it unfair and its unfair­ness is dan­ger­ous­ly com­pound­ed by its final­i­ty. Wrongly con­vict­ed peo­ple could be exe­cut­ed and like­ly have been.” It con­cludes, ​“The state Senate should reject this bill and, if nec­es­sary, Gov. Pat McCrory should veto it. Lives, per­haps even inno­cent lives, will depend on it.”

(Editorial, ​“NC bill to restart exe­cu­tions push­es an unjust penal­ty,” The News & Observer, May 2, 2015.) See Editorials and Recent Legislative Activity.

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